If your dog has started leaving hair on every dark-coloured thing you own, nothing is wrong. The fall coat change runs on daylight rather than on weather, which is why it gets going while Central Texas is still hot enough that nobody believes the season has turned. The American Kennel Club puts the year's heaviest shedding in spring and fall, and says that in the fall dogs shed harder to clear the summer coat and make room for a winter one.
The trigger is light, not temperature
Daylight is what starts the coat change, and it goes early here. The US Naval Observatory's sun tables give Austin 12 hours 45 minutes between sunrise and sunset on September 1, and 11 hours 27 minutes by October 15, a loss of 78 minutes in six weeks. The AKC says shedding is primarily triggered by changes in daylight and temperature, and that hormonal responses to those changes signal the coat to transition between seasons.
The temperature half arrives late. NOAA's 1991 to 2020 climate normals for Austin's Camp Mabry station put the average high at 91.4 degrees in September, 82.5 degrees in October and 71.5 degrees in November. So the coat begins building for winter in a September that still averages a 91.4 degree afternoon, and owners quite reasonably think something has gone wrong with their dog.
Nothing has. The light is telling the coat one thing and the thermometer another, and the coat is the one on schedule.
What the undercoat is actually doing
The undercoat is insulation that works in both directions. The AKC describes the soft, dense undercoat as protection in cold and hot weather, and the coarser topcoat, the guard hairs, as the layer that repels moisture and shields the skin. In warm weather that undercoat helps regulate temperature by trapping cooler air near the skin.
Which is why I will not shave a double-coated dog to help them cope with the heat. The AKC is direct about it: shaving does not eliminate shedding, it damages the topcoat, and it damages the undercoat that insulates in winter, keeps the skin dry, and leaves room for air to reach the skin and keep it cool in hot weather. The one exception the AKC allows is a coat so tangled and packed that the skin cannot dry out, and that is a mat problem wearing a heat problem's clothes.
How often to brush from here to winter
Brush more often than you did in August, and brush all the way down to the skin. The AKC's baseline for a double-coated dog is a slicker brush followed by a comb at least once a week, a comb-through two to three times weekly to prevent mats, and several times a week or even daily through peak shedding. Fall is peak shedding.
- Slicker first to lift the dead coat, then a steel comb to prove you got through it. If the comb snags, the slicker missed a layer.
- An undercoat rake for the breeds that carry the most. The AKC's double-coated list includes the Labrador Retriever, Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Border Collie, Australian Shepherd, Great Pyrenees, Bernese Mountain Dog, Pomeranian and Samoyed.
- Short sessions most days rather than one long one on Sunday. Easier on the dog, and far more effective on a coat that is actively dropping.
- Brush before a bath, never after. The AKC's reason is the one owners learn the hard way: bathing a dog with mats only makes the hair tighter and harder to brush out.
Mats build faster now than at any other time
A mat is dead undercoat with nowhere to go, and in the fall there is more of it in the coat than at any other point in the year. Add a dog who is still swimming, because the lakes here stay warm long after the daylight has gone, and the coat packs down tight in the places you do not check: behind the ears, in the armpits, along the back of the legs.
Do not cut a mat out with scissors. The AKC's warning on grooming at home is that one wrong movement from a nervous dog can cause serious injury, because skin lifts up into a tight mat where you cannot see it. If a mat has already gone solid, leave it for me. I would rather spend the time working it out, or clip that one section properly, than have you find skin underneath it.
If your dog is under a year old
A puppy's first coat change can land in these same weeks and look far more dramatic than it is. The AKC puts the loss of the puppy coat between four and six months of age, with a range that runs from 12 weeks to a year depending on the breed, and says the adult coat that replaces it is usually thicker and stiffer. A Pomeranian can take up to two years to fill in completely.
So an autumn puppy can be doing both things at once, and the coat that grows in may not feel like the one you brought home. That is the coat you will be maintaining from now on.
What it changes about your appointment
The groom itself does not change in the fall, but the interval usually should. A dog dropping coat gets more out of a bath, a proper blow-out and a full brush-through than at any other time of year, because the dryer reaches dead undercoat a home brush would take weeks to move. The AKC also points out that pollen rides into the house on a dog's coat when the plants and the weather are changing, which is its own argument for taking the coat out in the driveway rather than off the sofa.
If your dog is on an eight-week schedule and you are finding hair on everything by week five, move it in. The full-service groom covers the bath, the blow-out, the brush-out and the coat work in one appointment, one dog at a time, in the van outside your house. I am out in Lakeway most weeks, and autumn slots go earlier than I would like.
One last thing. A coat change is when things that were hidden under the coat turn up, and I will always tell you what I find on your dog's skin. What it means is a question for your vet, not for me. The about page explains how the van works if you have not had a mobile groom before.