Shedding help

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Have a 9 month golden retriever. In the early months people often said ‘bet he’s a nightmare for shedding’ and I was naively like ‘no actually, it’s not been bad at all’. YET, I should have said.

Oh Lord the hair. We have a robot hoover which is on most days but the sofa would need hoovered daily (hourly?) at the moment to look ok. The robot hoover is struggling and there’s tufts all over. I have a Henry which I don’t mind getting out but not daily!

Any survival tips? Should I get a leather sofa? Grooming? Last time we went they mentioned handstripping - is this something that helps?

Firstly I’m not House proud I probably hoover twice a week!!
Corgis have a double coat and currently the under coat is falling out literally as walks along hair drops of him. It’s like tumbleweed rolling across my floors. I tried combing him 15 mins later I was covered from head to toe in soft downy hair (impossible to get off your clothes) but it made no difference. He goes to doggy day care and they also gave him a really good combs again no difference. The good news only happens this badly twice a year: now and October/Novemberish last year I took him to the dog groomers in November in sheer desperation she said she’d never known anything like it!!
The rest of the time hair falls out but it’s not everywhere. Hopefully it’s that time of year when your dog is loosing his winter coats and that in a few weeks he’ll go back to shedding just small amounts.

I don’t have leather sofas but do have throws on things luckily most of the time my dog doesn’t really want to get on the sofa.
I do have wooden floors everywhere and only one rug this makes hoovering much easier.

Honestly I’m not that house proud either, it’s just that the amount of hair is next level!! But I’m reassured by the possibility that it’s a winter coat shed and might not be as bad as this for too long…. This pup adores the sofa. And yes good point about wooden floors, some rooms are and some aren’t but I think we will get them all done.

Yep! Wooden floors and throws on the sofa that I wash every week.

It is wire spring and autumn...

Worse! Not wire

Does your washing machine get clogged with hair? I could see loads left in the drum after washing a blanket he’d been on today.

I don’t think it’s normal to handstrip a retriever. I could be wrong. My mum had a border terrier who was. And I do the wolfhounds.
Frequent brushing. Outside!
I use a zip up laundry bag designed for horse numnahs etc. to wash stuff.
But you have a dog that sheds. Goldens are notorious for being hairy. Time to make peace with it!

What does hand strip even mean? Sounds harsh! Yes I think you are right about making peace with it. We love him and his floof. But happy to take all advice that minimises, great tip re laundry bag I will do that. I have been brushing but actually there’s not that much coming in the brush compared to how the couch looks! I maybe need one of those handheld hoover things to quickly run it round the couch.

Mine's a double coated Eurasier... basically a massive ball of fur.
Sheds a bit all year round, but spring and autumn... POW...
Everything has a layer of hair on it... furniture, clothes, food... I could hoover every half an hour and there would still be more.

Get a good undercoat rake and REALLY comb your dog every evening. I swear I could spin and knit a jumper in a week with what comes off my girl when she's blowing her coat! But it does settle into normal levels after a few weeks... til autumn

I have a goldie, and yes, they do shed! However they go through a really bad clear out about twice a year. I groom as often as he will let me, but just tend to do one section each day.the worst "tufts" are on back legs, top of back area. The nesting birds love the hair for their nest building.

Please don't shred, strip or cut or have him "tidied" they are supposed to be double coated and have lots of long hair. Just brush to remove loose hair and prevent matting.

Labrador owner here. Or should I say mobile fur dispenser.

Leather sofas don't necessarily help as they get scratched. Mine sounds similar to yours in that you can almost see the hair falling as he walks around. I have found that a rubber coated builder's glove will enable hair to be brushed off of things (clothes, dog bed, blankets, carpets etc). The sort you get from screwfix for a couple of pounds if you're in the UK. Then vacuum after.

Haven't found any other solutions to be honest 🤦‍♂️

U can get some stuff to put in washing machine that gets rid of all pet hair works really well x

I have a German shepherd and a Labrador. Neither really shed much till 12 months old. Then the shepherd sheds twice a year for 6 months at a time. The lab sheds for a few weeks twice a year. You get used to it. During German shedder season if you manage a meal or cuppa with no hair in it it's a miracle!

😂😂😂 I have a German Shepherd too and really relate to this.

I have to confess I don’t wash blankets/bed very often. I use old towels/old blankets mainly from charity shops etc and sporadicly chuck them out as I don’t want hair in the washing machine. And I live in an area where there is a lot of rain and little sun and therefore mud everywhere.

What kind of brush do you use when brushing? If you have an appropriate deshedding comb it will take tremendous amounts of fur out.

My retriever is 3... I wish I could tell you the shedding gets easier... but it doesn't, they just get bigger and have more hair.
It's worst in winter and coming into summer.
Find a good dog groomer, and stick with them.. start now, go every 3-4 months. They do a phenomenal job at getting the undercoat clean and fresh.
You need a curved brush if you plan on brushing at home.. it will grip onto the undercoat and pull off the dead hair.
Make it a fun activity so your dog doesn't hate the brush (we give a lickmat with peanut butter whenever he gets his hair brushed.. and only when he gets his hair brushed so he absolutely loves it)
Start adding some fish into the diet.. we give a can of fish a week - it does wonders for their hair and skin.
Retrievers can suffer with really dry skin and most of them usually have allergies to a lot of dog food that's on the market. The only thing we can feed ours is a turkey or fish based food.. anything else gives him horrendous dandruff.

Get a good hoover

Those with the intensely shedding GR are they neutered? I only ask as ours is 2yrs entire and doesn't shed in the way you are describing. He has the golden retriever mane and feathering etc but not much coat. Hairs do fall out but not in clumps and when we brush him there isn't loads coming off.

Our collie on the other hand has a really hard shed, with tufts as others have described. I'm pretty sure her undercoat has gotten thicker since she was spayed. She hates being brushed but I find the diy dog grooming place good as she doesn't mind the blower which blasts most dead hair away.

I have a beagle who barely sheds as well as three cats and we have to vacuum everyday - I think that's normal when you own animals, especially ones like golden retrievers who go outside.

I know it's not what you want to hear but as a dog walker, I honestly don't know any hairy dog owners who don't run the vacuum round at least once or twice a day. That seems pretty normal to me.

To clarify, it's the dogs that are hairy, not their owners

I also agree that daily brushing outside is essential and regular trips to the groomers too.

@LBF2020 my dog is neutered. Although I didn't notice an increase in the shedding post neuter.. however I noticed his hair became a little bit more coarse rather than the fluffy puppy hair he once had.. maybe it's just a coincidence and an age thing I don't know

Have a lab but his coat is longer than most labs and I end up hoovering twice a day especially this time of year and am resigned to always finding dog hair

Yes GR shed loads, we were still finding hairs, long after our lovely goldie was pts at 13. Absolutely lovely dog. Hoovering needed every day. We also had a long haired collie, sometimes I hoovered twice a day, as you see always see where he had been, he was double coated, oily coat, marked the walls and paintwork wherever he laid.

I have two and one of them is a rake style I think, I haven’t used this in a while as it seemed to hurt him…I’ll get it out though and experiment a bit as that was a while ago when he wasn’t shedding like this.

He isn’t even that long haired compared to some goldies (so far!), it’s mainly round the neck he has loads, bum and tail. Some of it is still definitely puppy fluffy and the back is coarser. Neutering is another question…haven’t decided what to do about that yet.

I suppose you have all answered my question that hoovering daily or accepting hair everywhere is how it goes. Thanks for the various tips tho, I think gloves, brushing and washing machine care are all on my radar now! And sorry to the poster who still finds hair after losing DDog, that must feel poignant.