Constantly moulting

Why does my Labrador seem to moult all the time? There are definite periods when his coat is coming out in handfuls, but even that seems to be more frequent than just a spring moult and another in the autumn.

Alison Logan advises…

Provided your dog is shedding dead fur, rather than losing all of his coat and not re-growing it, then this is perfectly normal. We adapt to the seasons through clothing and heating our homes. In the winter, we wear extra layers outside to allow us to be comfortable in cold weather.

However, we need our indoor spaces such as homes, shops and workplaces to be maintained at temperatures above the external temperature to enable us to shed clothes indoors during colder weather. Our dogs would experience proper seasonal changes in temperature if they lived outside all the time, as they would if they lived in the wild.

We have upset their natural pattern of coat growth and shedding, so it is down to us to groom out the dead fur as necessary. If it is any consolation, it is often hard to judge whether our shorthaired black cat is leaving more fur around our house than our black Labrador!