Grooming

Did you know we offer grooming?  We do!  It's $5 for a regular (rough) groom, or if you're at a show and want the fancy stuff, $10-15 for a show groom (the average chin gets by just fine with a rough groom).

As you probably already know, as with all advice we offer, the advice is free, including grooming advice!  Had someone stop by the other day and they were telling me how they were having a difficult time grooming their chin.  Apparently we'd talked about this before, as they had purchased a #3 grooming comb, so they had the right tools, but they made the comment that the comb was sharp (it is) and that the chin didn't like grooming (they typically don't).  Since they were here in person and had the chinchilla with them, I asked them if they wanted the chin to be groomed that day, and they said yes.

So actually, it ended up being a learning experience, because they could see me grooming the chin and I could explain some things, while doing them, that might not be so easy to understand just with a description.  It's easy to not know how to groom a chin if you've never done it before!  For example, they were grooming head to tail -- like you would brush a dog, right?  For chins, it's tail to head, which seems backwards to most people... but that's how us oddball chin people groom.  Then at the end, you actually hold the comb differently, instead of pointed into the fur, you hold it more like straight down, and brush to get some of the loose fur that's left out.  Then the chin gets the front paws set down, hold one ear and the tail, and wiggle the hind end.  It sounds funny, but it fluffs them back out.  But I guarantee, how you are picturing that last part could very well be way different than how it looks in person... but once you see, it's like oooh ok that's how that's done.  So now that they've seen it, they can go home and try to groom again on their own.  In the meantime, their chin had a LOT of dead fur come out and is probably much happier...

Had someone else ask about grooming the other day... since it was over the phone, I suggested they watch some youtube videos to get an idea of what it looks like, explained the tail-to-head thing, and for them (for the average person) explained that you're probably fine getting a metal dog flea comb and using that to groom.  They're usually not nearly so pointy as the chin combs.