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Spring Clothes for Small Dogs: Boo’s Closet, Mud Season

Boo lived in San Francisco, where the wet months run into spring, and a dog with a clipped coat and very short legs comes home from a wet walk soaked to the belly. His owner’s answer was Pawz boots on rainy days, with a hoodie on top. That is still the right answer, with better gear.

This is the smallest season page on this site, because spring clothes for small dogs come down to three things: keeping the rain off, keeping the mud out of the house, and knowing what to do with a coat that is shedding, growing in, or both. Everything about warmth, coats, boots, and measuring is on the winter clothes page and is not repeated here.

Rain, and the light spring layers

None of these were Boo’s apart from the Pawz; they are what we would buy today for a dog with his coat.

1. The hooded slicker. A proper raincoat with a hood and a leash hole, in a color you can see at dusk. The SPOT one has been sold for years and has the review count to prove the sizing. A clipped coat has no guard hairs left to shed water, so rain goes straight to the skin; the slicker is what stops that, and it is most of what spring asks. SPOT’s Rainy Days hooded slicker.

2. The fleece vest, for the cold mornings. March mornings are winter and March afternoons are not. A zip-up fleece vest is the layer that goes on for the early walk and comes off by noon, lighter than a coat and faster on and off than a sweater. The KOOLTAIL zip-up fleece vest.

3. The denim jacket, for the dog that is done with sweaters. By April the sweater is too much and the dog is still not a fan of wind. A lightweight denim jacket is the spring layer, and it photographs better than anything else on this page. The small-dog denim jacket.

Mud: boots or a paw cleaner

4. Pawz rubber boots. Boo’s rainy-day boots, and the pair for mud: on in a minute, off at the door, and the mud stays in them rather than on the floor. Why they tear, why dogs tolerate them, and how they rate are all in the winter page’s boots section. Pawz rubber dog boots.

5. The paw cleaner, for the dog that refuses boots. A silicone cup you fill with water, dunk each paw in, and twist. It does in thirty seconds at the door what a towel does badly in five minutes, and twenty-five thousand reviews say it survives daily use. Measure the paw width against the size chart; a small dog is usually the medium cup. Dexas MudBuster paw cleaner.

The coat blow

Spring is when a double-coated small dog sheds its undercoat, and when a clipped coat like Boo’s grows in unevenly. The two need different tools.

6. The undercoat rake, for the full coat. For a Pomeranian, a Keeshond, or any spitz that was not clipped, the spring shed is an event, and a rake pulls the loose undercoat out before it ends up on the couch. Sixty thousand reviews make it the most-reviewed one on Amazon. It is the wrong tool for a clipped coat, where the teeth reach skin instead of undercoat. Maxpower Planet undercoat rake.

7. The soft pin brush, for the clipped coat. A clipped Pomeranian coat grows back in patches and needs daily gentle brushing, not a rake. This is the brush we recommend on the teddy-bear page for the same reason. The Hertzko soft pin brush.

If the clip is the question, the Boo Cut page explains what clipping does to a double coat and the Pomeranian haircuts page covers the alternatives; do not book a summer clip in spring without reading the first one.

When the sweater comes off

The dog decides, same as always. A small dog that was in a sweater all winter does not need one on a 60-degree afternoon, and a dog that pants on a walk or flops onto the cool kitchen floor afterward is telling you it is overdressed. Keep the fleece for the early mornings, retire the winter coat when the frost does, and if you are unsure whether your dog needs a layer at all, the winter page has the test. Whether the dog likes any of this is its own question.

Boo’s year-round wardrobe is in Boo’s Closet.

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