Review: Yowza! Pet Grooming Vacuum Attachment

This is why I shouldn’t hang around pet supply stores… I invariably buy the latest cool toy. This time, I was at Oliver’s Pets in Nanaimo when I saw this neat looking little tool: the Pawsitively Clean Yowza! vacuum tool.

It was only $29.99 Canadian, so I bought it to deal with Tierce’s latest fur-dump.  While shedding blades and Furminators are very, very good at getting fur out of Tierce, their other talent for getting it on everything else is something I could do without.

The Yowza! is a shedding blade combined with a vacuum suction attachment and covered with a clear plastic top. It is designed to pull free and suck up shedding hair. It comes with a couple of universal vacuum hose connectors and a hose of its own to give the groomer more flexibility.

I fancy that Tierce harboured some little fondness for me before I brought this home.  However, this has now been overshadowed by his undying hatred for the vacuum and his loathing for anything associated with it.

I would have felt worse if Tierce hadn’t recently flaunted his skills in selective hearing in the back yard when I was calling him to come in.  Yes, I am cruel, heartless and don’t deserve to own the delicate flower which is a Shiba.

Tierce did not like this attachment.  He escaped three times, managed to slip his collar on the second attempt and got to the second floor landing before the Voice Of Death was invoked.

Shiba grooming with the Yowza vacuum attachment by Pawsitively Clean.

The description on the box said “Includes adapters to fit all major vacuum brands including BISSELL®, Dirt Devil®, Dyson® Eureka®, Hoover®, and Kenmore®”. It also fit my ShopVac.

I found that the handle took some adjusting to before I could wield it as effectively as I wanted, due to its length. I would have preferred a shorter handle that didn’t require as much maneuvering to get the angle I wanted. Of course, the fact that I had Tierce trapped against the couch, on the floor didn’t help; if I had a grooming table, this might have been less of an issue.

With the vacuum running, it was really hard to see what hair (if any) was sucked up. I turned off the vacuum and used the attachment all by its lonesome for about 10 seconds. I got a respectable amount of hair accumulation, which the attachment then obligingly sucked up when I turned the vacuum back on. You can see the hair below.

Shiba grooming with the Yowza vacuum attachment by Pawsitively Clean.

As I continued brushing and intermittently retrieving Tierce from his flight away from the Big Bad Vacuum, I noticed that some angles made the hair wrap around the shedding blade. This wasn’t a big issue and it removed easily enough. One thing about shedding blades is that they always seem to leave a number of hairs partially pulled out with each stroke. The Yowza! did the same thing, but the vacuum suction helped keep these from getting away. I found that petting Tierce to collect the undecided hair did the trick to get them out.

Shiba grooming with the Yowza vacuum attachment by Pawsitively Clean.

I found that this tool actually lived up to its claims – “Shedding blade grabs loose hair and the vacuum suction captures the fly-aways as you groom”. The hose attachment did give it some flexibility, which made up in part for the longish handle. I did like that the tool was small; it worked well with Tierce’s body size. After about 15 minutes of unimaginable torture grooming, Tierce looked remarkably sleek for a dog still leaving a quarter of his bodyweight in fur on the couch every day. Plus, there was no fur to clean up! Joy!

Shiba grooming with the Yowza vacuum attachment by Pawsitively Clean.

But WAIT! There’s MORE! The man in my life and I had the brilliant idea of seeing how well this attachment pulled hair out of the carpet on the stairs, they being liberally coated with le poil du chien. It WORKED! After years of arguing with the cheap gray carpet, trying to convince it to release its storage of Tierce’s undercoat, we have had the ideal weapon delivered into our hands. This makes me want to deconstruct one of the secondhand shedding blades I have lying around and seeing if I can’t make a vacuum attachment for the ShopVac specifically dedicated to wresting hair out of the floor.

Floor fun with the Yowza pet hair vacuum attachment

2 Comments

  1. I love Tierce’s baleful glare!

    Isn’t it amazing what lengths we desperate Shiba owners will go to when they’re blowing coat? As for me, I’ve acknowledged that I’m helpless in the face of Shiba shedding, at least since last year when I developed carpal tunnel. So, when it gets really bad, I take my Shiba mix to the grooming “salon” of a certain (US) national chain and order the Furminator Treatment. Worth every penny, and the fur ends up in their drain, not mine.

    BTW, one reason I’m convinced my dog *is* a Shiba mix is her coat. She also looks a lot like a Shiba, but bigger and with a straight tail.

  2. Ok, I’m convinced. I have a healer mix, another notorious shedding breed. He actually let us vacuum him today, even rolled over willingly. I’m giddy with optimism that this is not a fluke, but rather a dawn of a new era, I’m shopping for *THE* perfect vacuum tool. You had me at the “burn in hell”, but the carpet cleaning power sealed the deal.

    Thank you for the review!

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