Grooming

The main thing you will need to take care of a Tibetan Terrier coat are:

Slicker Brush

Pin Brush

Steel-tooth comb with fine teeth

Steel-tooth comb with medium teeth

Rubber or latex hair bands

Nail clipper

Spray bottle with water to mist the coat down before brushing (to minimize hair breakage)

Grooming

While the Tibetan Terriers are puppies, their coat is very easy to care for because puppies have no undercoat and grooming is mainly trainig for adult life. Teaching your Tibetan Terrier early in life to lie on it´s side on the floor or a grooming table while it gets brushed, will be a lesson you will be thankful for in the future. Between 9 and 15 month the adult coat starts to grow. Now the coat needs a daily grooming session because the mats seems to form overnight. Once the coat change is finished one careful grooming session per week is usually enough. Leaves, twigs and burrs have to be picked and brushed out immediately to make the dog comfortable and to protect the coat from matting up. Let´s do a start. Lay your Tibetan Terrier down on it´s side. Groom all it´s hair away from you. Now lightly spray the coat with water. Start to brush it´s belly, then start to brush the hair down part by part. When you finished one side turn your Tibetan Terrier over on it´s other side and start again.When you reach a mat, try gently to separat the single hairs with your fingers until you can pull out the mat without  any of the surrounding hair.A good quality hair conditioner can help you a lot through this. There are many good hair conditioner available.

Bathing

Normaly it should be enough bathing your Tibetan Terrier once a month unless the dog is entered in shows. Bath your Tibetan Terrier with a good shampoo followed by a thorough rinse. Now put on the conditioner and massage it in. Depending on the coat texture, you don´t have to leave it on for long, then rinse it off. Try to gently squeeze as much water out of the coat as possible. Now use the towel pat dry your Tibetan Terrier. Place your dog now on dry towels and start to blow dry it. Brush and blow dry at the same time. Please dry your Tibetan Terriers coat from the inside out because the top coat drys quicker than the under coat. For blow drying your Tibetan Terrier you will need one till two hours.

Checking the eyes

Brush the hair away from the eyes and check that they are clear and not runny. Clean any gunge from corners of the eyes. This is like cleaning the remnants of sleep out from your own eyes.

Checking and cleaning teeth

Check the teeth for tartar and brush using a toothbursh or finger and any of the doggy tooth pastes that you can buy. Also check the gums for redness. Checking and cleaning of teeth can save you the cost of having them scaled or extracted by the vet.

Ears

Lift the ear flaps and check that ears are not red or smelly. Tibetan Terriers can grow a lot of hair in their ears and that can cause problems. Plucking ear hair out is easy, especially if you do it as a part of your normal grooming. Use your forefinger and thumb, take a few hairs at a time and you quickly pull them out. Pulling the hair out of the ear is painless for the dog.

Clipping the nails

Hold the foot in one hand and hold the coat back away from the nails. On white nails you will see a difference in colour fom the pink, "live" nail and the white "dead" nail. With black nails you must look and you will see where the "quick" is. Place the nail clipper, on the nail to be cut, so that the blade is facing away from the Tibetan Terrier. The edge of the nail clipper should be just below the "Quick" of the nail. Now clip the nails. Repeat on all nails and don´t forget to cut the dew claws.When you have trimmed one nail too short and it starts to bleed, don´t worry. You will be amazed how quickly the bleeding stops and the dog is not bothered about it. You can buy Potassium Permanganate from your local chemist and stick the offending nail into it to stop the bleeding.

Checking Feet

It is also important to check between the toes and pads of feet for any foreign bodies or hair balls. Feel with your fingers between the toes and around the pads for anything that does not feel right. Hair balls, just need teasing apart with the fingers, like any other mat. Foreign bodies can usually be plucked out carefully with your fingers.