Grooming glove as floor cleaner?

My poor little vacuum cleaner has been teetering under the onslaught for some time, and has finally given up. I think the unique combination of my long hair, Cybi's mid-length, coarse hair, and Daisy's shorter, fine hair creates a mat on the carpet which then requires high power, very effective filtering and extreme resistance to blockage to overcome. My vac, which did a cracking job pre dog, has none of these things, and is additionally hampered by an awkward bend in the tube which is very prone to clogging.

I managed to ignore the blackening carpet for a good couple of weeks, but I did eventually crack - once there was no evidence that the carpet was in fact blue I figured it was probably time to do something about it. Buying a new vacuum cleaner isn't on the available list of options right now, as it's going to have to be a super powerful, pet hair resistant big thing, which basically = expensive. While buying dog food, I noticed this - the CarPet Pet Hair Remover. I figured for a fiver it was worth a go, while the state of my carpet was driving me to distraction, and the reviews were pretty good. Then I spotted that it was basically the same thing in a square as the Mikki Grooming Glove I'd bought for Daisy is in a glove.

So I figured while I was waiting for the delivery, I'd have a go at the floor with the grooming glove.

What a success. Labour intensive for sure (you're effectively grooming the entire surface of the floor with a pad the size of your hand), but it's got the hair up brilliantly. I suspect the novelty of having to clean my living room floor by hand will wear off remarkably quickly, but for now I'm just appreciating the fact that my carpet is unarguably blue, even if only until the next time the dogs decide they have to have wrestling practice in my living room.

Before and after getting at the floor with the grooming glove. Quite the change!

Grooming

I committed a slight purchasing faux pas when buying grooming gear for Daisy. She is relatively short coated, with feathery legs, tail and ears, and so I bought her a tool designed for shorter coated dogs - the Mikki Grooming Glove. After a slightly iffy first introduction, where she tried to eat it, she quickly discovered that being groomed was nice! However, the glove is no match for even her relatively short collie coat, and quickly clogs up with hair, which is then a terrific pain to get out of the glove. It does do a great job of pulling loose surface hair out, but doesn't really get into anything below the very top layer.

So after a recommendation from a local trainer, I've bought grooming tool #2: the fabulously-named "Zoom Groom". Initial reports are very positive - on Daisy at least - but I think there might be brush purchase #3 fairly imminently to deal with Cybi's longer and coarser coat. More brush research coming up!

Looking Pretty

Daisy is a smooth-coated girl, so grooming is generally pretty cursory and more to do with getting the mud off than it is sorting out matts and tangles. She does have a few areas of longer hair - she has a fluffy tail and feathery legs, and lovely, soft, longer hair behind her ears but I tend to ignore them for the most part. However, even for a short-coated dog, she is leaving a colossal amount of hair all over my house at the moment, so yesterday was her first introduction to being brushed in an attempt to get the worst of it off the dog and onto the brush, rather than off the dog and onto my carpet, sofa, clothes....

Initial meeting between dog and brush didn't go so well:

but she figured out pretty quickly that grooming is nice, and lay sprawled out on the floor with her eyes closed while I brushed her.