Ahh, spring. The trees are budding, the daffodils are blooming… and your pet is shedding. Even shorthaired breeds manage to our clothes, floor and furniture with clumps of hair.

Shedding is part of the natural cycle of hair growth on your pet. After each growing stage, there is a resting period during which the old hair is shed out. While hair is lost all year long, the heaviest shedding occurs in the spring.

Home treatment plan

While you can't stop your pet from shedding, it is possible to reduce the amount of hair the family pet leaves around the house with an aggressive routine of bathing and brushing.

• After a thorough brush and combing, start with a shampoo . Use only products formulated specifically for pets because animals have a different skin pH than humans. Massage in well, and follow with a conditioning rinse.
• Thoroughly brush and comb your pet's coat to dry it and remove dead hair. After systematically brushing through the coat, use a professional steel-pinned comb to make sure that all the knots and shedding hair have been removed.
• Brush and comb at least weekly -- more often for pets with long coats - to remove hair as it is shed out. It is best to dampen the dry coat with a conditioning coat spray to prevent coat breakage. You might want to do this outdoors on the deck or patio to keep the hair out of the house.

The process will need to be repeated frequently throughout the pet's shedding cycle.

Leave the hair at the salon

If your pet is a heavy shedder or you simply don't want to bother with all that work, you may prefer to take you pet to a professional groomer. Best Friends pet care centers nationwide offer a procedure called Shedicure, which reduce the amount of hair being shed around your home by as much as 80%.

The Shedicure procedure involves all of the steps described above, but includes a final step in which the groomer uses a special tool and a "carding" technique to remove remaining excess undercoat.

Nothing can total eliminate natural shedding, but repeating the Shedicure procedure every 3 to 6 weeks during shedding season can leave most of that shed hair at the salon floor instead of on your carpets and furniture. Some breeds seem to shed all the time and may require the process year-round.

For more information about Shedicure or help with other grooming problems, visit or call the Best Friends center nearest you.