03/07/2026
Clipping double coated dogs in summer.
Anyone who knows me or follows me will know that I live with 4 Shelties (Shetland Sheepdogs). They are one of many double coated breeds which simply means their fur is comprised of two different layers; they have a soft, fluffy undercoat as well as a coarser topcoat. These different layers shed and regrow on different schedules, with the soft undercoat shedding and regrowing on a faster cycle than the topcoat or guard hairs.
I followed the generally accepted advice and kept them well groomed, removing as much of the loose undercoat as possible. This worked fine in our average British summer, and they coped with the odd day of 25 degree Celsius heat.
We are told never to clip a double coated dog, usually for the following reasons:
❎ The coat on a double coated breed helps them to stay cool in summer as well as keep warm in winter.
❎Clipping the topcoat or guard hairs will damage the coat and it’ll never grow back properly.
I never questioned these statements as I’m not a groomer or a scientist and foolishly assumed they were based in science and had been researched. After all, these were being stated with extreme confidence by every groomer, breeder and dog person on the internet.
Then came the heatwaves of the last few years, culminating in the first Red Warning of heat for parts of the UK that I’ve known in my 48 years on this earth. By this summer, my dogs are also aging, the eldest being 13.5 years old and the youngest is rising 7 and they were visibly struggling to maintain their body temperature. I started reading more about thermoregulation and realised that their coats weren’t really keeping them cool. Shedding their undercoat meant they were just reducing the amount they were going to overheat by had they not shed it. This is very different to “keeping them cool”. A dog’s main mechanism for heat loss (~70%) in ambient temperatures of 20°C to 33°C is convection and radiation from the body surface. The longer and thicker the coat is, the slower the rate of heat loss.
I’m no physicist (I failed GCSE Physics!) so I looked to people who were. People with peer reviewed research on thermoregulation. The distilled version of my conclusions is that a dog’s coat has good insulative properties. It protects the body from UV rays/sunburn but not from solar heat gain. The insulation provided by the coat would theoretically keep a dog’s body insulated from the heat IF the dog was inanimate and wasn’t continually producing body heat. Because a dog is always producing heat, the insulation the coat gives leaves nowhere for the heat to escape to.
This quote from Dr David Marlin explains it well:
“A thick coat does not keep a dog cool in a hot climate. Insulation keeps heat in or out. It depends on what the temperature direction is. If the outside is lower than the dogs skin heat moves from skin to outside and the coat slows that down. Great when it's cold. If the outside is hotter than the dog's skin then the coat slows the movement of heat in BUT - the dog is still producing heat continuously that it has to get rid of, so now it has to increase respiratory evaporative heat loss and sweating evaporative heat loss.”
For me, that sealed the deal and in order to provide some relief from the 35 degree heat and considering we were only in June and still had July and August to get through, I made the decision to clip them.
Yes, I committed a cardinal sin in the eyes of many; I clipped my shelties.
Yes, they look a bit silly.
No, it was in no way a professional looking clip!
Did they find it easier to stay cool? Yes.
Do I regret it? No.
Welfare trumps cosmetics.
In the next post I’ll be looking at the second statement; Clipping a double coated dog will ruin their coat and it’ll never come back properly. To this end, I’ll be documenting the regrowth of their coats in real time so that people can judge for themselves whether this is true or not.
