The Beard

His four-inch beard draws a lot of comments, most of them good. But there are a few people every now and then who ask me to cut it:

"Doesn't the floor get all wet?"
"Can he eat with all that hair?"
"Trust me, he'll be a whole lot happier!"

The answer is, maybe. But Kafka is grey-black. Many people are instictively afraid of a 60 lb black or nearly black dog. The one thing that makes them smile? His beard. His natural, floppy ears also get positive comments, but it is the beard what makes people smile. I could add that this long beard is a very distictive characteristic of the breed, but I'd be accused of placing aesthetics ahead of my dog's happiness. Yet it would be hard to find a schnauzer owner who did not fall in love with those schnauzer looks in the first place. So, yes, I am guilty of wanting my dog to look like a standard schnauzer. Not a show dog standard schnauzer, just like a pet standard schnauzer. The difference is about 20 less hours per week of grooming. Of the 4-5 hours of grooming per week I spend on Kafka, about one fifth is spent on his beard.

There's the washing, every other day for us lazy pet owners. When you don't wash it, it becomes stiff with food fat and dirt, giving the beard a spiky appearance. And just water won't do. We use a hypoallergenic shampoo to enable the frequent washings, which by the way, is really hard to do over the bathtub (try the toilet instead) if you can't be outdoors.

A dirty beard is hard to comb. Combing is the other mandatory grooming action you'll perform. You don't want to foster the development of fuzzballs that turn into major knots. Once when I tackled the matter after two back-to-back business trips (a total of ten days without combing), I was able to pull out about forty of such knots. This was possible because I trained Kafka very early to expect combing and to put up with it. Leave the beard alone for longer and you'll have to cut out the hair, or worse, clip it.

Something that the standard schnauzer book didn't say: You'll be parting the beard frequently, in search of weeds and pests. Foxtails can become embedded, and ticks can get lost in this black forest. It helps to inspect as you go. We often stop at a bench at the dog park so I can get rid of weeds before we get home. There is a certain finger motion you must master in order to remove such weeds and avoid pulling the very sensitive beard hairs, otherwise smart schnauzers learn to avoid your probing hand. If you must use a comb, spray first with conditioner (and for this, The Stuff is the best).

Kafka's beard can grow longer, but I keep it at four inches because it looks better, it gets rid of split ends, and it is easier to comb. Every six months or so I take a pair of thinning scissors and trim it in a natural pattern. Then, when we go to the park, we can listen to the kids say, "look, there's a doggie with a beard!"