Press the button and the fur lets go.
One press and the pin bed drops, so the whole mat of collected hair lifts clear. That is the difference between brushing until the job is done and brushing until you are tired of clearing the brush.
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Why you'll love it
A slicker full of matted hair is a job in itself, and the brush that needs picking out is the one that stays in the drawer. Pressing a button instead is the difference between brushing weekly and brushing daily.
The loose hair that ends up on your sofa sits under the topcoat, which is why stroking and rubber mitts only get so far. Fine pins reach it; that is the whole job of a slicker.
Cheap slickers use cut wire, and the ends scratch. Rounded tips are what makes it possible to work over bony shoulders and hips without the animal objecting.
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A slicker has fine, angled pins set close together, and its job is working through tangles and lifting loose hair and debris out of the coat. It suits medium and long coats where hair mats against itself, and it is the brush most owners of a spaniel, a doodle or a long haired cat should be using between professional grooms.
It is not a deshedding tool. Deshedding blades reach through the topcoat to rake out dead undercoat, which is a different action and the right one during a heavy moult on a double coated dog. Using a slicker for that is slower, and using a deshedding blade on a single coated dog scrapes the skin.
A slicker fills fast on a moulting animal, sometimes within a few strokes. Picking that out by hand is fiddly, and the pins are fine enough to catch fingers, so what actually happens is that people stop brushing before the coat is done. The brush is not the limiting factor; clearing it is.
A retracting bed removes that entirely. Press the button, the pins drop below the surface, and the mat of hair lifts off as one piece. It takes a second, so the session continues rather than being interrupted, and in practice that means more of the coat actually gets brushed.
Work in small sections, brushing in the direction the coat lies, and hold the hair above the section you are working on so the pins reach the base rather than skating over the surface. Most matting forms close to the skin, behind the ears, in the armpits and where a harness sits, so those are the areas to check rather than the back.
Little and often beats occasional and long. Five minutes several times a week keeps a coat on top of itself; a half hour session once a month is both harder work and less well tolerated. If you find a genuine mat, work it apart with fingers first rather than dragging a brush through it.
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The details
Clear the pins after each session and rinse the head under warm water every few weeks. The one piece body means water does not sit inside a seam, and rinsing removes the skin oils and dander that build up on the pins and gradually make the brush drag rather than glide.
Let it air dry fully before it goes back in the drawer, and check the pin tips occasionally. The rounded tips are what stop the pins scratching, and a pin that has lost its tip or bent out of line will catch skin. A brush with damaged pins is worth replacing rather than persevering with.
Loved by real pet parents
Every slicker I have owned ended up in a drawer because cleaning it out was worse than the brushing. Press this and the pins pull back and the whole pad of fur lifts off in one go. It takes a second, so the brush gets picked up again the next day.
It gets right into the undercoat and the rounded tips mean she does not flinch over her hips. If you lean on it the retracting bed gives slightly, which feels less solid than a fixed brush. It has never caused a problem, it just feels that way in the hand.
At about 90 grams my wrist does not ache after doing a whole double coat, which was the issue with the heavy wooden one I had. Twenty minutes of work and the bin is full.
I checked the pins with my own arm before using them, because the last brush drew a line down her shoulder. These are properly rounded at the ends and she leans into it rather than shifting away.
No complaints about how it works and the cleaning button is clever. At roughly 17 centimetres across it simply takes a long time to get through a big shedding coat, and I keep wishing the head were wider.
A one piece body means there is no seam collecting hair and skin oil, so it goes under the tap and air dries on the hook. Six months on it looks the same as it did when it was new.
It works well and the fine pins do reach the soft fur under her topcoat where all the loose stuff hides. She is not keen on being brushed at any length, so five minutes is her limit, but what comes off in that time is impressive.
The hole in the handle means it lives on a hook rather than in a drawer. That sounds trivial and it is exactly why the brush gets used after walks instead of at the weekend.
Stroking and rubber mitts never got below the top layer with her. The fine pins bring out handfuls of the woolly stuff underneath and the coat above it lies better afterwards.
Good questions
Not if you keep it light. A slicker works by weight of the brush, not pressure. Press down and even rounded tips will drag on the skin over the spine and hips.
Yes, though less dramatically. Short double coats like a labrador's shed heavily and the pins reach that undercoat; a genuinely single coated dog needs a rubber curry instead.
Two or three times a week keeps most coats on top of shedding. Long haired cats and double coated dogs in a moult benefit from daily, in short sessions rather than long ones.
Not with a light hand. Let the pin tips work at their own weight rather than pressing, and stop if you see redness. Cats have thinner skin than dogs and are less tolerant of pressure.
Some, for lifting loose surface hair, but a rubber mitt or a bristle brush suits a short single coat better. A slicker earns its place on coats that tangle.
Five minutes several times a week for a medium or long coat, daily during a moult. Little and often is far more effective and better tolerated than an occasional long session.
Last reviewed 30 August 2026
Advice
Sixty seconds a day beats twenty minutes a week, and where you start on the body decides how the session goes.
6 min read