Hand stripping in Brighton: who offers it and what it costs

Wire-coated breeds, terriers and schnauzers among them, grow a coat that is meant to be pulled out by hand at the root rather than cut with clippers. Clipping still leaves a soft undercoat behind and, over repeated clips, changes the coat's colour and texture for good. Hand stripping takes far longer than clipping, and only four of the eighteen groomers listed for Brighton, Hove, Patcham, Rottingdean, Saltdean, Portslade and Lewes still offer it.

Who offers it, and what it costs

Slobber & Chops, the Kemptown salon also trading as Bone Idol, is the only one of the four to publish a price: £50 for hand stripping, on top of its Level 3, OCN and iPET-qualified team's usual bath, brush and full-treatment services. Hollingbury Dog House, the home-based, one-to-one studio in Hollingbury, lists hand stripping alongside its published full-groom prices of £40 for a smooth coat and £45 for a long coat, but doesn't itself put a figure on the stripping add-on. Patcham Paws Dog Grooming, Hannah Moss's home salon open since 2023, offers hand stripping alongside Emmi-Pet teeth cleaning and canine first aid, again with no published price. Barker & Yapp Dog Grooming in Lewes, trading since around 2009, lists hand stripping alongside its £30 full groom and £10 "top and tail" tidy-up, but the stripping price itself isn't published.

Why it costs more than a clip

A proper hand strip on a wire coat can take several times longer than running clippers over the same dog, since the groomer is pulling dead hairs out by hand in sections rather than shaving them off in one pass. That is why Slobber & Chops prices it separately from its full treatment rather than folding it into a standard groom price, and why the other three groomers above prefer to quote once they have seen the coat rather than publish a flat add-on fee.

How often it needs doing

A wire coat kept properly stripped is usually done every couple of months, though the exact interval depends on the individual dog's coat growth and how it is brushed between visits. Skipping stripping in favour of repeated clipping does not harm the dog, but the coat's colour and texture drift further from the breed standard with each clip, which matters if you show the dog and is largely cosmetic if you don't.

If none of the four suits you

Clipping a wire coat instead is not harmful to the dog and is what every other groomer in this directory will do by default. The difference is entirely cosmetic and long-term, so it comes down to whether keeping the coat's original texture and colour matters enough to you to seek out one of the four above.

What to ask when you book

• Whether they strip the full coat by hand or only finish areas like the head and legs while clipping the body, since these are different jobs, priced differently
• How long the appointment will take, since a proper strip is a longer sitting than a clip-based groom
• What it costs on top of, or instead of, a standard full groom, since only Slobber & Chops currently publishes a figure