Well others may have too in the past but this one is new to me.
While walking arround town I came across a pet shop that actually have a big window in their “hair dressing” area and they were in fact trimming a chow chow’s “big coat”. I just walked in immediatelly and:
-yes sir, if you want the hair you can pick it up, of course, no problem, what the h… are you going to do with it? What!! flies? what for? fishing. uhh I see. all right then, come back when ever you want
And you won’t beleive the kind of hare’s ears that came out!! Great natural color, it dubbs just fine with the same effect real hare’s hair has…
To tell you the truth I picked up a lot of it along with some schnauzer trimmings, mixed a little of both and, voila!!
Chow chow’s hair is all fur, with no guard hair on it and it’s all almost the same color, to give it some guard hairs and some contrast I threw some of the schnauzer’s, it came out just fine.
Now giving it a second thought, should I keep calling my hare’s ears like that? maybe: chow chow nymphs?
To be honest I don’t care. I have hair dubbing for the rest of my life and if the day comes when the bag is finally empty I can walk to the pet shop and get a lot of it again and for free!!
Many years ago, I had a samoyed, the white sled dog. Had to comb his coat regularly to keep it from matting.
I saved about 50 lbs of the fur, it is snow white, and is a mixture of dense, fine under-fur and long, kinky-.curly, semi-transparent guard hair. When washed and dyed, it makes wonderful bodies for wet flies and nymphs.
I loved the dog and am still using the fur after thirty years.
My wife has a a 15lbs. rabbit that is currently sheading/molting. When I woke up this morning she left a nice big pile of albino white rabbit fur for me to use that she had pet off of him last night. Its a great supply for fur!
My cats keep catching the multitudes of baby rabbits that carouse around our yard. I never thought about it, I ought to grab a little fur next time.
Speaking of which, one of the cats brought a live quail into the house last weekend. It let the thing go and the bird flew all around the living room leaving a trail of downy feathers all over the place. That was fun to clean up…
I suspect the smell of wet dog hair would effectively cover that of Sally Hardens! Dog hair cost me a good steak dinner. A friend, state representative in fact, and I had a running bet for several years on who could catch the first walleye on a fly intentionally. We went through what must have been hundreds of ideas and patterns - until one day he was stumped on how to finish dressing one of his odd looking streamers. Just then his old dog walked over to put his head in the fellow’s lap. Without thinking he reached down and snipped off some of the mutt’s hair, which turned out to be white. The fly looked good enough that he tied a couple of more and stuffed them into his fly box. A few months later he was in the tailwaters of a local dam and tied one of the flies on out of frustration, and bingo, I was buying steaks. He tells me the fly is now in a shadowbox and not because of winning the bet. The poor mutt got caught in a machine shed door in a blizzard and froze to death that following winter. JGW
If you need some guard hairs, try cat fur. I’ve found that adding cat fur (from my mobile dubbing dispenser) to angora goat is perfect. With the dog fur you have, you can make a kitten chow fly.
Frank Reid
I did exactly that a few days ago. I was still using hare’s guard hair to use on the tails but while I was petting a friend’s cat I thought I’d use the long grey-black stripped guard hairs that were all over my t-shirt. I did and the flies look just great.
As for the smell, who knows? It might be a little extra help. Would that still be fair game?