The Coat, She is a-Blowin'
It's January. We're in what passes for the Northern hemisphere. Unless the Human is sadly mistaken, it's the middle of the freakin' winter!
But Cassie the Corgi, Queen of the Universe and Empress of All Time, Space, and Eternity,i is already blowing her coat.
I've always thought that birds decided when to migrate, honeybees decided when to swarm, and fierce little dogs decided when to shed according to the length of daylight hours in any given circadian cycle. Dawn comes earlier: hair falls out, summer coat grows in. Dawn comes later: hair falls out, winter coat grows in.
No?
Possibly, quite possiby: no.
We've had an absurdly warm winter. Not one, single hard frost. The bougainvllleas, which by now should be raw sticks, still bear their load of magenta blossoms. Nary a salvia has croaked over. The Mexican primrose is shivering with joy and merrily consuming the entire flowerbed by the pool. The Africanized bees (all wild honeybees in Arizona are now Africanized) are cruising the yard and shooting in any open door in search of good hive-building spaces. The mosquitoes are joyously honing their beaks on the nearest whetstones. The black widows, which have decidedly not been frozen at any time during the winter, are gazing fondly upon the mosquitoes. To the extent to which a spider can salivate, the black widows are salivating. The neighbor's cat wants nothing more than to eat every gecko who might, within any stretch of the imagination, steal a mosquito away from a black widow. The mockingbird does not sing; he burps, reflecting happily on the mountain of bugs he has scarfed down. And, it must be said, the Gila monsters are preparing to swarm. ;-)
And the Queen's coat is falling out in chunks.
This leads the lowly human to suspect that it's not hours of sunlight but degrees of temperature that cause certain mammals to blow their coats.
Will global warming lead to more vacuuming of floors by the human servants?
Is climate change altering the way your corgi functions?
Comment
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Comment by Jane Christensen on January 26, 2014 at 11:42am
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Blizzard after blizzard here and then cold after:( My 16 year old cat looks horrible...partly his coat is bad from having to eat science diet canned food...not the greatest but he doesn't throw up from it at least. We are past picking the clumps out now just looses hair when we furminate and brush...I can't complain as we have had 2 very mild winters...but this one is "getting old".
We don't get to 118 but sometimes 103 or so but we have the humidity that makes things much worse in summer.
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Comment by Lawren and Teddy on January 26, 2014 at 11:13am
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Teddy is blowing his coat too. He leaves both clumps and trails of flying fur. You touch him and the fur just wafts into the air. Two of my cats are also shedding like crazy. Good thing I don't mind.
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Comment by Linda on January 26, 2014 at 7:29am
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Mine didn't get the memo either. It is and has been bitter cold in my neck of NY. Max, my fluffy, is blowing his coat.....great chunks that stick out and can be removed by hand. One thing with a fluffy, when they blow their coats is that rather than leave floors and carpets coated in fur they leave behind clumps that can be picked up by hand. Katie is just doing her normal leaving of fur on everything...after 6 years of living together you would think the corgis would be on the same blowing the coat schedule but no. Max needs to see the groomer, his coat is getting quite long but with the bitter cold I don't want to take him. His undercoat takes so long to dry that I am afraid he will still be damp when I pick him up and don't want to expose a damp dog to the cold.
Add to that the 3 cats. Oliver,he black one, is shedding...just run your hand down his back and the fur flies. Graycie, the wayward tiger, has a double coat and actually doesn't shed but she has to be brushed every couple of days to remove the dead fur or she smells. Gemma, the queen of all she surveys, is not shedding....yet.
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Comment by Vicky Hay on January 26, 2014 at 12:08am
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We live in Arizona. We trade off the movable North Pole for 118-degree days in the summer and a drought that's gone on over 10 years and just keeps getting worse.
LOL! That's interesting to learn that dogs in snow country also blow their coats in December & January. Isn't that odd...I wonder why that happens?
Yesterday she was loving up a young father and his little kid at the parkf. Guy was admiring her when a large chunk of dog hair fell out on his foot and almost crippled him..."They shed a lot, don't they?"
Ahem. "Well, uhmmm...not as much a German shepherd!"
I used to take the Gershep out to the front curb to rip hair out with a thing like a curry comb. Her hair would fly into the air like...well, like SNOW! One day the wind was blowing and great billows of hair were drifting into the air. A fellow coming home from work drove by the house and into the cloud of flying dog hair -- you should have seen the expression on his face! He was totally flummoxed!
Bet he was even more flummoxed when he got home and found all that dog hair stuck in the radiator...
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I have 3 that didn't get the memo:( It's been below zero temps several days the last couple months and several blizzards also! I am sweeping/vacuuming daily plus furminating and it is just starting to get a bit better! At least in spring I can furminate outside and the birds can line their nests...right now we have no use for all the fur we gather!!!!
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Comment by Julia on January 25, 2014 at 9:20pm
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Where the heck do you live? :) It has been fricking FREEZING all winter. The north pole "slipped" down, as one weatherman put it. There are very few walks, cabin fever is approaching a near-fatal level. Lilliput like to go outside in -35 degree weather (that's F, with wind. Without the wind it's only -12 F, much nicer), where she sits and sniffs the breeze. She began blowing her coat in cold, cold December, and kept it up for ages. I think she may be done now, although there is still plenty of fur flying, just not in such big clumps. The temps are still dropping into the negative numbers.
So, no. My corgi is just as contrary now as ever. In the frigid air she blows her coat, then goes out to enjoy the cold.
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