Northern Breeds Don't Shed

Tuft of hair 1.jpg
Originally uploaded by Shmoomeema

In the continuing educational series of Northern Breed Dogs, Professor Meeshka will now tell you humans the truth about shedding.

We don’t.

Nope, you can go right out and adopt hundreds of us and there won’t be one single piece of fur shed in your house ever.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!

Ok, I’m such a liar.

As an example of fur shedding, take a look at this picture. This is an actual fur clump that fell off of Indy when his human dad scared the fur right off him during a game of hide and seek.

Northern Breeds like Huskies and Malamutes will shed 365 days a week, but twice a year they literally fall apart with HUGE clumps of fur (such as depicted in the picture) when we “blow” our downy undercoats. In the spring we dump out the downy winter undercoat and don our summer fur, which is slightly less fluffy than our winter fur, and in the fall we dump out the downy summer undercoat to make room for our very fluffy winter coat. During the rest of the year, we dump out our guard hairs all over the place. The guard hairs are like spikey fur that protects us from the rain and snow. Its sorta like scotch-guarded hair. That keeps the wetness from soaking into our downy undercoat and protects us from getting too cold or too hot.

Some humans think that in the summer we’ll get too hot with all that fur, but we don’t. Its like insulation, call it a fluffy soda can coozy if you will, and we’re perfectly happy in the summer because we’re protected by our coats. The humans that don’t know better will sometimes shave us and that just makes things horrible bad for us. We can get sun-burned very easily without or protective coats, we’re also at the mercy of the biting stingy bugs that can get to our skin without our coats. Even worse is that sometimes our coats don’t grow back right!

Take Spinless Bionic Hip Sammy as the example. After his drastic reverse mohawk spine surgery shave, it took forever for his fur to grow back in and even still, after 7 months he still has one bald spot that hasn’t grown one tiny bit of fur. Luckily its a small spot and the humans comb some fur over it to hide it, but still, that could happen to a northern breed all over if they get shaved.

So, whatever you do, NEVER shave a Northern Breed dog. We’re fluffy for a reason!

Also, if you don’t want fur all over your furniture, carpet, clothes, hair, food, toilet paper, car, yard, and in your mouth... don’t get a northern breed dog. When northern breed owners jokingly say “fur is just another condiment”... they aren’t kidding, seriously. You can vacuum all you want, it’ll still be there in every nook and cranny, every little thing you own.

Now, for all of you that actually made it through that lesson, what kinds of things can be made from Northern Breed fur that are shown in the “We shed a lot” pictures for huskies? Whoever can tell me first in a comment post will win a non-shedding barking husky!

Meeshka
(We are northern breed... watch us shed.)