DIY dog grooming can be done, even when you own a sensitive self-cleaner like a Shiba Inu pup. While the dog is fastidious like a kitty when it comes to keeping itself clean, you will still need to intervene every once and a while. The following guidelines will enable you to keep your dog looking and feeling its best.
Trimming Your Shiba’s Nails
Before trimming your Shiba’s nails, you will need to familiarize yourself with the various nail cutting-type tools.
- Scissor-type clipper – Use this type of nail clipper on your Shiba when it is a puppy. The clipper is not large enough to use on an adult Inu’s nails.
- Guillotine nail clipper – This clipper requires that you place your dog’s nail in a hole so you can cut it. Don’t use this clipper if your Shiba is resisting nail trimming activities. This clipper should only be used on a super cooperative dog.
- Nail grinder – This device vibrates a little, and it takes a little longer to use – not probably the top selection when trimming nails.
- Professional stainless-steel nail clipper – Using a clipper professional like a Safari brand professional clipper will go a long way in getting the results you want. Combine the clipper with a nail file for the best outcome.
How to Trim Your Shiba’s Nails
To use the nail trimmer, hold the paw gently yet firmly and trim the nail tip with one single stroke. Stop short of the Shiba’s quick. If your Shiba’s nails are really long, only trim a small amount at a time. Repeat the process every 7 days or for a week until the nails are the desired length. You only need to clip the nails monthly after this initial trim.
How to Get Your Inu Used to the Idea of a Nail Trimming
To get your Shiba Inu used to the DIY dog nail trim, hold its paws for a couple times to get it used to the idea of your holding them. That way, you can transition easier in cutting your dog’s nails. You want him to fee nail trimming a perfectly natural. While this strategy is not exactly dog obedience training, it will work in calming your dog for the first nail clipping.
Take Baby Steps
If you are afraid to cut your dog’s nails all at once, clip one per day until you get the hang of it. Take baby steps so both you and your dog are comfortable about the trimming process.
Brushing Your Dog’s Hair
To keep your Shiba’s hair looking its best, choose a slicker brush. A professional slicker brush features flexible stainless-steel pins and a comfort grip handle made of rubber. This brush makes it possible for you to keep your Shiba’s hair looking immaculate. Not only does the brush work well on the dog’s bristly outer coat, it removes dead and shedding hairs. This is the brush to use when you dog is blowing fur.
Give Him Some Kibble
When brushing your dog, make sure you go with the grain of the hair. Give him a treat when he stays calm during the brushing process. If you have a puppy and he gets overexcited, take a time out until he becomes more relaxed, then give him a treat for acting so well-behaved.
Brushing Your Dog’s Teeth
Part of grooming should also cover brushing your dog’s teeth. This is especially true of a Shiba, who tends to suffer from gum disease and dental decay more than other dogs. Use a doggy toothpaste, as human toothpaste can make a Shiba sick. In fact, human brand toothpastes can be toxic, so do not use this type of dentifrice to brush you dog’s teeth.
Find a brush with a dual head, so you can take care of any sized tooth. Brush you dog’s teeth at least twice a week and sprinkle probiotic flakes in your dog’s food to keep your dog’s breath fresh and odor-free. Any digestive disturbance can wreak havoc on a dog’s dental health, and can also cause unwanted bad breath.
If you have any questions about the correct way to groom your Shiba, ask your vet for guidance. He or she may also be able to make recommendations about the tools you can use to keep your Shiba looking and feeling its best.
Clean the Ears and Check for Fleas
One of the last grooming measures is to clean your dog’s ears and to check for fleas. Find an ear cleanse product that contains aloe vera, which features odor control. The product should be used regularly to clean your dog’s ears of debris, wax, or dirt – all which can trigger infections. The product you use should not contain irritants or harmful chemicals. A natural ear cleanser product will keep your dog’s ears from itching.
You will also need to check for fleas. Fleas normally can be found on the dog’s stomach, at the base of its tail, or close to the dog’s head, near the neck. Check for the pepper-like flea dirt or poop the insect leaves behind. If you dampen the area and it appears red, your dog needs to be treated for fleas. Contact your vet for further instructions about getting rid of the tiny and pesky bugs.
What do you think? Do you have what it takes to keep your Shiba Inu well-groomed with the right grooming aids and products? Before you start any DIY dog grooming, make sure your Shiba Inu understands the basic commands of sit and lie down. This will make it easier for you to get your Shiba Inu’s cooperation when you begin grooming him. Give him praise or treats if he remains calm while you brush him, trim his nails, clean his ear, or brush his teeth.
Follow a Regular Schedule of Grooming
Make it a goal to follow a regular grooming schedule. That way, both you and your dog will get used to the idea of a regular grooming routine. Any irregularity in a dog’s activities can upset him. That is why you should groom your Shiba at the same time once or twice a week. Shampooing can be done every few months. Choose a shampoo designed for a dog’s hair. Also, use a blow dryer, set on the lowest setting to add volume to the hair after it is washed and dry it quickly. Place you hand on the dog as you use the dryer to keep him placid and calm.
All of this can be a lot to take in for a Shiba Inu owner, so below are some tips and tricks to be able to have focus points while considering how to groom the beloved pups!
Shiba Inus are known for their royal yet adorable looks. Their gorgeous hair adds the icing on the cake. Their compact, fit, and short bodies are a treat to watch for any dog lover. However, such beauty comes with equally important shiba inu grooming needs.
As a proud Shiba Inu owner, you must take care of their grooming requirements regularly. Here’s how you can do that.
Like us humans, dogs need some grooming too. While they take care of themselves to some extent, as their human companions, it’s our duty to keep them clean and healthy. Here are some important Shiba Inu grooming methods.
Grooming a Shiba Inu at home is realistic for almost any owner, because the breed does most of the work itself. Your job is the parts a self-cleaning dog cannot manage: clearing dead undercoat, keeping nails and teeth in check, and watching ears and eyes for early trouble. Approach it as a light, regular routine and it stays a five to ten minute habit.
The pieces below cover nails, brushing, teeth, ears, eyes, and bathing in detail. Before you start, hold the priorities in mind: brush enough to keep the undercoat from matting, bathe little enough to keep the skin from drying, and build calm handling early so the dog tolerates the rest. Everything else is timing and a light hand.
The short version, in four parts:
- Brush weekly, and daily during the spring and fall coat blows, to clear undercoat before it mats.
- Bathe only every few weeks to a couple of months, and dry gently.
- Keep nails trimmed and teeth brushed on a steady schedule, since Shibas are prone to dental disease.
- Watch ears and eyes, and treat discharge, odor, or cloudiness as a vet visit, not a home fix.
Taking care of their coat
This dog must be brushed every week or fortnightly. Get a slicker brush and a furminator for the job. Also remember that Shibas have their shedding season.
If your dog has a longer coat, begin with the slicker brush, since it’s more fluid. Don’t use the shedding blades, rather leave it to the professionals.
Taking care of their ears
Unlike many other dog breeds, Shiba Inus don’t require much of an ear-cleaning regime. However, that doesn’t mean you can entirely neglect that.
To avoid any ear-related issues, make sure that your doggo doesn’t play in water for far too long. This helps avoiding the entry of water into their ears. If necessary, use the appropriate ear-cleaning solution.
Taking care of their teeth
Many dog owners neglect the health of their dog’s teeth. You please don’t be one of them. If you do so, they might develop gum diseases, which could turn out to be nasty.
Make sure that you put extra effort and care while cleaning your dog’s teeth. If you think that you won’t be able to handle that, take your canine to the vet.
Taking care of their eyes
They say, “Eyes are the windows to the soul”. It is true in the case of the dogs as well.
Your dog’s eyes can tell you a lot about their health. Be an observant of any changes in their eyes. Mucous, tearing, or cloudiness means bad business. They need immediate attention.
Furthermore, Shiba Inus are prone to Glaucoma and Cataracts. So, get them checked now and then.
Bathing your Shiba Inu
Shiba Inus are clean dogs. They like getting bathed. However, you have to get them used to water and baths from an early age.
Their coat is very resilient to dirt and water. That helps them to need bathing
not too often. Make sure that you bathe them not more than twice every month.
For usual cleanups, you can use baby wipes or a dampened cloth, but if they are trained well I hope that it will be less necessary.
The grooming mistakes we see most often
Most home-grooming problems are not about skill or tools. They come from a handful of predictable errors. Here are the five we correct most often on dogs that come to us.
- Bathing too often. A Shiba is self-cleaning, and frequent baths strip the oils that keep the coat and skin healthy. Owners chasing a "clean smell" with weekly baths usually create the dryness and odor they are trying to fix. Stretch the schedule to weeks or months, not days.
- Brushing only the surface. A slicker over the topcoat looks like grooming, but if it never reaches the undercoat, dead hair packs down against the skin and felts. The mats form where you cannot see them: the rear pants, the ruff, behind the ears.
- Skipping teeth until there is a problem. Shibas are more prone to gum disease and dental decay than many breeds. Owners who wait for bad breath or a brown gumline are already looking at a veterinary cleaning. Brushing a few times a week is far cheaper than that.
- Rushing a nervous dog. Shibas remember bad grooming experiences and dig in harder next time. Forcing a full nail trim or deshedding on a panicking dog trades ten minutes now for months of resistance. Short sessions and treats build a dog that sits still.
- Treating ear and eye signs as cosmetic. Dark ear discharge, odor, head shaking, cloudiness, or excess tearing are medical signals, not grooming chores. Shibas are prone to glaucoma and cataracts, so changes in the eyes deserve a vet, not a wipe and a shrug.
An owner brought us a young Shiba that fought every nail trim to the point that both of them dreaded it. Nothing was wrong with the dog. The first trim had gone badly, the owner had pressed on anyway, and the dog had learned that paws meant a struggle. We rebuilt it from zero: touch a paw, treat, done, over many short sessions until the clippers were boring. Patience beat force every time. If you are still deciding whether the breed's grooming and temperament fit your life, our honest guide on whether a Shiba Inu is right for you is worth reading, and to choose the right tools, see our rundown of the best brushes for Shiba Inus.
What we have seen since 2019
Across 250-plus Shibas placed and boarded since 2019, the dogs that are easy to groom are almost never the calm ones by luck. They are the ones whose owners did the boring work early: handling paws, ears, and mouth in short sessions long before those handling skills were needed. By the time a real nail trim or a coat blow arrived, the dog had no reason to panic. The dogs that fight grooming are usually the ones whose first experiences were rushed or forced.
What worked: same-day-each-week brushing, treats paired with handling, and stopping the moment a dog tensed rather than pushing through. What did not work: saving grooming for when the coat was already matted, and using restraint instead of patience. Restraint teaches a Shiba to brace; patience teaches it to tolerate. When a skin, ear, eye, or dental issue does not clear with normal care, that is a groomer or veterinarian call, and the earlier the better.
Owners who travel can keep the routine intact. Dogs in our in-home boarding stay on their grooming and handling schedule, so a two-week trip does not undo months of building a dog that sits calmly for a brush.
Common followup questions
Can I groom a Shiba Inu myself, or do I need a groomer?
Most of it you can do at home: brushing, teeth, ear checks, and light face and paw trims. A groomer is worth it for nail trims if you are nervous about the quick and for a deep deshedding during a heavy coat blow. What you never need is a haircut, since a Shiba's double coat should not be clipped down.
Why does my Shiba hate being groomed?
Usually because an early session went badly and the dog learned to brace. Shibas are sensitive and hold grudges about handling. Rebuild it slowly: touch a paw or ear, give a treat, and end on a good note, over many short sessions. Forcing a struggling dog through a full trim makes the next one worse.
What tools do I actually need to groom a Shiba at home?
A slicker brush and a comb cover most weeks, an undercoat rake or deshedding tool handles coat blows, and nail clippers or a grinder keep nails in check. Add canine toothpaste with a soft brush and a gentle ear solution. You do not need clippers for the body coat.
What to read next
For a shorter grooming overview, see our quick guide to grooming your Shiba Inu, and choose tools with the best brushes for Shiba Inus. To understand the coat behind all this, read the Shiba Inu coat explainer and our breakdown of Shiba Inu shedding. If you are still weighing the breed, our take on whether a Shiba Inu is right for you is candid, and our in-home boarding keeps the grooming routine going while you travel.
Need in-home boarding for your Shiba?
Small groups, five walks a day, never a kennel. Daycare and vet transport included.