If you own a Chow, you already know the arithmetic. There is a dog in your house, and there is also a second dog made entirely of loose undercoat, and that one lives under the bed and along the baseboards. I have a 7-year-old cinnamon red rough-coat named Bruno, 64 pounds, and for the first six years I fought that second dog with a metal comb and a pin brush and lost. In January 2026 I bought a Maxpower Planet double-sided undercoat rake, and I have used it nearly every week since. Ten months is long enough to know what a tool really does.
Here is the honest shape of it: the rake did not stop Bruno from shedding, because nothing does. A Chow blows coat in spring and again in fall, and no grooming tool has ever changed that. What the rake did was shorten how long each blow lasted and cut down how much of it ended up on my kitchen tile. That is a smaller claim than most listings make. It is also the claim I can defend.
The weekly tool, not the daily one: see the current price on the Maxpower Planet rake
Double-sided stainless steel, 9 teeth on one side for mats, 17 on the other for thinning out the undercoat. Ten months in, mine has not bent a tooth.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →Ten Things That Changed After Ten Months
Two sides, two different jobs, and it turns out both were needed
The 9-tooth side is for the stubborn stuff, mats and tangles. The 17-tooth side handles thinning and deshedding. For six years I used a single blade-style tool and treated every part of the coat the same, which is why the back of his ruff always looked slightly wrong. Now I run the 17-tooth side over the body in long strokes and only bring out the 9-tooth side for a real knot, usually behind a front leg. Reading the coat and choosing a side takes about four seconds and it saves the coat.
The teeth are sharpened but rounded, so it glides instead of scraping
The listing says sharpened but finely rounded teeth, and I was skeptical of that phrasing until I felt it on my own forearm. Sharp enough to part dense coat, rounded enough that it does not rake skin. On a Chow that distinction matters more than on a short-coated dog, because you cannot see the skin you are working over. I go by feel and by how he stands. If he shifts away, I have gone too deep or too fast, and I lift off.
20 to 30 minutes on a Sunday replaced a daily losing battle
My routine now is Sunday morning on the back patio, on a rubber mat, 20 to 30 minutes with the rake. During the coat blows in April and May, and again in October, I go twice a week. That is the whole schedule. Before the rake I was working on him far more often and getting less done, because a pin brush pushes surface hair around and never gets underneath. Twenty focused minutes once a week beats five scattered minutes a day for a coat this dense.
By the second week, the tumbleweeds on the tile were fewer
This was the first thing I could actually measure. We have tile in the kitchen and the laundry room, and Bruno walks that path a dozen times a day. Before the rake, I swept undercoat drifts off that tile most evenings. Two weeks in, the drifts were visibly thinner and less frequent. Ten months in, I still sweep. I just do it less, and the fluff I pick up is smaller. Small, repeatable, boring result. Those are the ones I trust.
It gets under the guard coat without cutting it up
Through 2025 I used a blade-style deshedding tool from the pet store and stopped, because it left the guard coat looking cut and ragged along his back. That tool takes hair off whether the hair was ready or not. A rake with spaced teeth combs the loose undercoat out from underneath and leaves the outer coat alone. Ten months in, his back looks even. That is not a cosmetic vanity thing for me, since a guard coat that has been chopped back unevenly does a worse job of what a guard coat is for.
The size and weight mean one hand can do the work
It is a small tool. About 4.6 ounces, roughly 6.6 by 3.9 by 2 inches, with an oblong head and a rubber handle that does not turn in my grip. I am 60 and my wrists are not what they were at 40. A heavier brush would have me quitting halfway through the ruff. This one I can hold for half an hour without my hand cramping, and the anti-slip handle means I am not re-gripping every few strokes.
The ruff and the pants are the two places it earns its keep
Bruno has a thick ruff and feathered back legs, and the pants are where mats set up if I neglect them. The 17-tooth side works through the ruff in sections, and I use it lightly down the pants with my free hand holding the leg steady. He hates having his back feet handled, so that part is a two-minute negotiation every time. But it is two minutes now instead of a fifteen-minute argument, because the tool moves through the hair instead of snagging on it.
It pairs with a slicker instead of replacing it
The rake is my weekly tool. It is not my daily tool and it was never going to be. Five minutes in the evening with a self-cleaning slicker over the ruff, behind the ears and down the pants handles the daily surface work, and within about three weeks of starting that in January I stopped finding new mats behind his ears. The slicker goes where the rake is too much tool. Neither one does the other's job.
Bath day got shorter because the rake does prep work first
Baths happen in the garage, in a plastic tub on the floor, with Dan holding the leash. About every six weeks. I rake him out before a bath, because a coat full of loose undercoat holds water like a sponge and takes forever to dry. Raking first means less wet hair packed against the skin, which matters to me specifically because of the one hot spot he had on his neck under the ruff in August 2025. A coat dried to the skin is the whole point, and the rake is step one of that.
Ten months, no bent teeth, no rust, nothing to replace
Stainless steel teeth on a rubber handle, used weekly for ten months, twice weekly during two coat blows, on a 64-pound dog. Nothing has bent, nothing has pulled loose, and the hair wipes out of the teeth with a thumb. I have spent more on tools that lasted one season. Whatever else I think about this rake, it has been cheap per use, and that is the number I actually care about.
Ten months in, I still sweep the kitchen tile. I just do it less, and the fluff I pick up is smaller. That is the whole result, and I will take it.
What I'd Skip
Skip it if you are hoping to stop the shedding. A Chow sheds, twice a year, hard, and a rake only manages what has already loosened. Skip it if you want one tool for everything, because the daily work on a coat this dense belongs to a slicker and the rake cannot do that job at close range. And skip it if you plan to rake over irritated skin, because that is the one thing I never do. When Bruno had that hot spot on his neck under the ruff in August 2025, that area got nothing but a wide berth and a call to Dr. Nwosu. My vet is not a groomer and I am not one either. I am a retired school office worker with a dog and a rubber mat on the patio, and I say so because you should weigh this accordingly.
What I would tell a new Chow owner is simpler than any of this. Pick one day a week, pick a spot the dog already likes, and be boring about it. Bruno cooperates when he believes the whole thing was his idea, which means I sit down first and let him come to me. Ten months of that, plus a Maxpower Planet rake, plus a slicker on the other six days, and the coat is a weekly job now. Not a crisis. A job.
A weekly 20 minutes beats a daily fight: check the current price
Double-sided undercoat rake, stainless steel teeth, rubber handle, 4.6 stars across nearly 8,000 reviews. Bought January 2026, still in weekly use on a 64-pound Chow.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →