There's a particular moment in spring where you sit down, stand up, and leave behind an outline of yourself in fur. If that's your house, this one's for you.
First: know which coat you're dealing with
Almost every shedding guide skips the only thing that matters, which is that not all coats work the same way.
A double coat — huskies, German shepherds, most collies, plenty of mixed breeds, and a lot of cats — has a coarse outer layer for weather and a dense, soft undercoat underneath for insulation. The undercoat is what blows out twice a year in clumps. It's what's on your sofa.
A single coat — greyhounds, boxers, many terriers — sheds steadily, lightly, all year. Less dramatic, but never a season that ends.
The reason this matters: the tools that work brilliantly on one are close to useless on the other, and one of them can actively damage a single coat.
What each tool actually does
An undercoat rake has long widely-spaced teeth that pass through the topcoat and pull dead undercoat out from underneath. On a double coat it's the single most effective thing you can own. On a single coat it does almost nothing.
A slicker brush — the flat pad of fine bent wires — lifts loose hair from the surface and works out small tangles. Good on most coats, gentle if you don't press.
A rubber mitt or curry brush grabs loose hair from short single coats by friction. Cheap, effective on a boxer or a short-haired cat, pointless on a husky.
A deshedding blade — the ones with a fine metal edge — cuts as well as pulls. They work, they work fast, and they're the tool most likely to do damage. Used hard, or on a coat that doesn't have much undercoat, they thin the topcoat and leave the skin exposed. Light pressure, short sessions, and never on a wet or matted coat.
More brushing is not automatically better
This is where a lot of advice goes wrong. Brushing daily during a heavy moult is sensible. Brushing the same spot for twenty minutes because hair keeps coming is not — there's always more hair, and at some point you're pulling live coat and irritating skin. Watch for pink skin or flinching and stop there.
Short and frequent beats long and thorough.
The rest of it
A proper bath and, more importantly, a proper dry loosens an enormous amount of undercoat. Wet fur left to air-dry on a thick coat traps damp against the skin and mats. If you bathe a double-coated dog, plan for the drying.
Diet has an effect on coat condition, but it's modest and slow, and the supplement industry oversells it badly. A dog on decent food with a dull, brittle, patchy coat has a problem that a bottle of oil isn't going to fix — that's a vet visit.
Which is the real point of this section: shedding that changes suddenly is a symptom. Bald patches, hair coming out in a way it didn't last year, scratching, flaky or red skin underneath — none of that is seasonal moult. Get it looked at.
Reina&Puffy: what your own routine is, which tool you reached for and abandoned, how much hair actually comes off. Photos of the pile are worth more than another paragraph.]
On grooming vacuums
Worth being straight about these, since we sell one. They don't remove more hair than a good rake — what they do is catch it at the source instead of releasing it into the room. That's the whole pitch. If your problem is hair on the dog, a rake is cheaper and just as good. If your problem is hair on everything else, the vacuum is the thing.
Most dogs need a week of gradual introduction before they'll tolerate the noise. Off, then nearby, then brief sessions on the back.