How to start and maintain cords

Basically cords are just organized mats! The ideal coat to cord will be pretty thick, have a lot of texture and be fairly curly.

Poodles do not have a "double" coat - according to research at Texas A&M they have a rather singular and fine coat of a very narrow diameter range. It is, however, very curly. The puppy coat is thicker and straighter. Eric and Nancy Liebes (Komondor) propose that cording, which starts when the adult coat come in, is the act of the finer, curlier adult coat getting tangled around the thicker and straighter puppy coat. And, unlike shedding breeds, the hair follicles are in constant growth mode.

In my naturally cording Poodles, the hair will form a "spiralling" curl if I bathe them and let their coats dry naturally. Each of the spiral curls will start to tangle up and our job is to keep each curl separate from the others.

With the coats that need help cording, we will bathe them and let them start to "felt-up" (again they are bathed but not brushed). Once the coats have started to mat, or felt-up, then we take each curly end and pull them apart so that they form their own separate cord. Ideally, size wise, you would like to see each cord about the width of a pencil. I have seen them almost cigar sized on a very large standard dog and much finer on a toy dog - both suited.

It takes a lot of work to get a corded coat established (unless they cord naturally) but the corded coat is pretty easy to keep once there.

When you are bathing a corded coat (and they should be bathed regularly) you will squeeze the shampoo into the cords and then squeeze the cords with the rinse water running over until the shampoo is rinsed out. Then we squeeze the cords with a towel to try to get most of the excess moisture out then put them in a crate with a box fan. Never rub the cord, blow it out with a high speed dryer, or brush it - they will only loosen the cords, not tighten it. When we are trying to establish the cords, we will ideally spray water on the cords at least once a day (we use a spray bottle to make the coat slightly damp - it will help tighten the cord).

Different coat colours react differently to cording......................black coats tend to cord fairly easily but the cords are rather fragile - when you are separating them, they will often just pull right off the dog! The beauty with a black coat though is that once established the cords will tend to stay separate. Cream/white coats tend to be much stronger, don't tend to pull off but are much more work to keep the cords separate (they keep wanting to felt up). The other coat colours tend to be harder to cord because the quality of coat often isn't there. I have seen good corded browns and blues and their coats tended to behave like a black coat.

I think I have covered everything - if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!