Hello, fellow animal lovers! 

As most of you know, Chris and I are the proud parents of two pups. 

Ziggy is our 10-year-old Shih Tzu that I got while I was in college (unpopular opinion but I don’t suggest you do this for a variety of reasons.) 

Ona is our almost 2-year-old German Shepherd mix. She was the first pet that Chris and I got together about a year ago. I begged and begged for a bigger dog to add to the pack and Chris would only consider German Shepherds so here we are. Ona fell into our lives at the perfect time but becoming a family of 4 was no small feat. The biggest challenge that I wasn’t prepared for was the hair. 

Today I want to share a few things we’ve used to help manage the dog hair. Hopefully, this will help some other puppy parents out there!

Blankets- One of the easiest solutions to keeping pet hair off any furniture is to use blankets or sheets. You can also utilize sofa covers but unfortunately, we have yet to find one to fit our couch so it’s a blanket city over here. The key to getting the hair off the blankets is simple. 

Before you wash the blankets, throw them in the dryer for 10-20 minutes, the lint trap picks up most of the hair before you even wash it. If you wash it first, you’ll find that sometimes the hair will get stuck in the fibers of the blanket, making it harder to get out.

Vacuums galore- I never thought I’d get so excited about vacuums but I guess that’s adulting. Vacuums are your biggest friend when it comes to dog hair. We currently have 3 vacuums in our house. A robot vacuum that we use on our wood laminate floor,  a regular vacuum that we use on the carpet, and a hand vacuum that we use on furniture, the stairs, etc. We hope to invest in a Dyson soon but these are working great for now! My favorite is the robot vacuum because we run it every day while we reset the kitchen or while I’m studying. 

At-home grooming- We don’t do too much at-home grooming but we do aim to give the dogs a bath every few weeks and we aim to use our Furminator a few times a week. The Furminator gets a lot of the loose undercoat hair so I recommend using it outside. 

Professional Grooming- Many groomers offer de-shedding packages and they can save you a lot of time and heartache. 

Lint rollers-  Keep one in your laundry room, one in your coat closet, one in your car, and one at your job. Thank me later.

Carpet cleaner- If you follow me on Instagram, you know I swear by our carpet cleaner. One of my top 5 purchases of all time. It not only picks up stains, odors, and other dust particles, it also picks up hair. We vacuum before using our carpet cleaner and it still picks up hair. One of these is worth its weight in gold.

I hope y’all find this helpful if you have a shedding family member running around!