Best Brush for German Shepherds (2026)
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German shepherd owners joke that the breed sheds twice a year, for six months at a time. It is barely a joke. The dense double coat drops hair every single day, then releases the entire undercoat in a twice yearly coat blow that can bury a house in fur. You cannot stop it, but with the right rake and a simple routine you decide whether that hair ends up in the trash can or on everything you own. Here are the brushes worth buying in 2026.
At a glance
Our Top Picks
Best overall rake for german shepherd coats
Maxpower Planet Grooming Rake, Best Overall
A shepherd carries a close packed undercoat that ordinary brushes glide right over, and this double sided rake is built for exactly that. The side with 9 rounded stainless steel teeth breaks up the dense wads that form on the pants and behind the ears, then the 17 tooth side thins the dead undercoat out in bulk. The extra wide head makes real progress on a big dog, the rounded tips protect the skin, and the rubber grip stays put through a long session. For the price, nothing touches it.
Check price on Amazon →Best for peak coat blow, in moderation
FURminator deShedding Tool, For Coat Blow Weeks
When the undercoat is truly letting go, the FURminator removes more hair per stroke than anything else here, and that power is the caution. Its stainless steel edge is a fine blade: overused, or used with pressure, it cuts healthy guard hairs along with the dead undercoat and can leave the topcoat dull. Pick the large dog short hair version for a standard stock coat, or the long hair version if the coat runs past about two inches. Light passes, no more than weekly, never on a wet or matted coat.
Check price on Amazon →Best simple rake at a rock bottom price
Safari Single Row Undercoat Rake, Best Budget Classic
Made by Coastal Pet, a family owned Ohio manufacturer, this is the undercoat rake your parents probably owned: one row of smooth tapered steel pins with rounded tips on a plain handle. No dual sides, no gimmicks, nothing to break. It pulls loose undercoat cleanly, it works on a damp or dry coat, and it costs about as much as a coffee run. If you want one tool to try before investing in a full kit, start here and you will still use it years from now.
Check price on Amazon →Best alternative dual sided rake
Pat Your Pet Deshedding Brush, Runner Up Rake
The Pat Your Pet uses the same proven layout as our top pick: 9 wider stainless steel teeth on one side for working through packed spots and tangles, 17 on the other for thinning out loose undercoat, all with rounded tips and a non slip grip. In practice the two perform so similarly that the sensible move is buying whichever is cheaper or in stock the day you order. If you run a two rake household, one upstairs and one down, this is the natural second unit.
Check price on Amazon →Best slicker for the final pass
Hertzko Self Cleaning Slicker Brush, Best for Finishing
After the rake does the heavy lifting, a slicker lifts the freed hair still sitting on the surface and tidies the pants, tail, and britches. The Hertzko is the budget favorite for the job: fine bent wire pins that grab loose hair without scratching, and a self cleaning button that retracts the pins so the fur pad lifts straight off. During a coat blow, when the brush loads up every few strokes, that one button will save you fifty small frustrations a week.
Check price on Amazon →Built to shed: the german shepherd double coat
A german shepherd wears a harsh, weather resistant topcoat of guard hairs over a dense, woolly undercoat. Most shepherds carry the standard stock coat, some the longer long stock coat, and both shed year round with a full undercoat release, the coat blow, usually twice a year in spring and fall. During a blow the undercoat comes out in tufts you can pluck by hand, and it typically runs two to four weeks.
The tempting shortcut, shaving it all off, backfires badly: the coat insulates against heat as well as cold, protects the skin from sunburn, and often grows back wrong. Our guide on why you should never shave a double coated dog explains exactly what goes wrong. The undercoat rake exists so you never have to find out.
A coat blow game plan
When the blow starts, switch from maintenance mode to campaign mode:
- Rake daily. Ten to fifteen minutes, light strokes, whole body. Daily raking during a blow removes the hair on your schedule instead of the carpet's.
- Bathe mid blow. A warm bath loosens masses of dead undercoat at once. Rake first, since water tightens existing tangles.
- Blow the coat out. Here is the pro trick: groomers do not brush a blowing coat out, they blow it out with a high velocity dryer that pushes dead undercoat off the dog in sheets. A strong home dryer gets you a real share of that effect; our roundup of the best dog blow dryers covers the ones worth owning, and the salon grade machines are in our high velocity dryer guide.
- Finish with the slicker. A quick pass collects everything the rake and dryer freed but left on the surface.
One professional deshedding appointment in the middle of each blow is also money well spent: bath, blow out, and rake with equipment most homes do not have.
Rake first, blade tools second
A rake and a FURminator are not interchangeable. Rake teeth are smooth and rounded: they slide through the coat and carry out only the hair that has already released, which makes them nearly impossible to overuse. Blade style tools cut. That is why they produce those dramatic piles, and it is also why heavy handed use trims healthy guard hairs and dulls the topcoat over months. Make the rake your default, hold the FURminator for the peak weeks, and if you want to compare more rake options, our best undercoat rakes roundup goes deeper.
The same double coat playbook applies to our golden retriever brush guide, while curly coated dogs need the opposite toolkit entirely: see our goldendoodle brush guide for that one.
For the heavier duty professional version of this list, see our pro guide to slicker brushes and deshedding tools.
Make the routine stick
Every tool on this list works, and none of them work from a drawer. The shepherds with manageable coats are the ones raked twice a week all year and daily during a blow, with a groomer visit anchoring each shedding season. Put those two deshed appointments on the calendar now, for spring and fall, and the whole year gets easier. If your groomer runs their bookings on GroomBoard, the reminder text before each visit means you never have to remember when coat blow season snuck up.