We have an Alaskan Malamute named Ajax who just turned 2. Something that a lot of people don't realize about Mals and other arctic dogs is that if they live in a climate with definitive warm and cold seasons, they'll go through a coat "blow" twice a year where they shed (at the very least) a good portion of their undercoat. Some dogs will blow their guard coat too, leaving only a baby fine coating of hair on their body until their new coat grows back in. Needless to say this happens usually in the late spring/early summer and again in the late fall/early winter. Arctic dogs that live in climates that are warm pretty much year round (like the southern US) don't actually have periods where they blow their coat, they just shed a greater amount on a more constant basis.
I started noticing earlier in the week that it looked like Ajax was starting his summer season blow. You can tell because he'll start to have these little errant tufts of fur sticking up from beneath his guard coat, or just stuck to his guard coat.
It's quite warm out today, so he is completely into the idea of lazing around inside in the AC, and I wanted to brush off some of the loose fur so that it didn't end up all over the house. I spent at least 30 minutes brushing him and this is what I ended up getting:
I don't know if you can tell or not from the second picture, but that shopping bag is about 3/4 full. And as you can see from the picture below, our boy is no where close to being nekkid.
This will go on for the next week to two weeks, until his body has decided it's gotten rid of enough fur. I'm not sure how much he'll loose this time around. He's yet to completely shed his guard coat, but last fall was his first real cycle through a coat blow. As a pup he didn't lose much at all in the summer. This is the joy of living with a Mal....lots and lots of hair. Hair tumbleweeds even, that hide beneath the toe kick ledges of the kitchen and bathrooms, in the corner of our tiled family room and along the baseboards of the carpeted rooms. And this is even with the fact that he spends a lot of time outside, hunting, digging and doing doggish things (in the winter, we can't even get him to come inside for any longer than about an hour. Any longer than that and he's just sitting at the door, looking through the window to the backyard and back at me again until I relent and open the door for him).
A lint roller is a must in this house and we have several. I've had a lot of people tell me that they couldn't live with a dog with that much fur. I expect to go through several vacuums in Ajax's lifetime. I've read that they don't stand up too well to Mal fur. But the thing is, I don't really mind the dog hair. This face more than makes up for it! :)
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