A mat does not start life as a mat. It starts as a patch of coat behind an ear, or in the armpit, or on the back of a hind leg, that got missed for a fortnight and then got wet. Almost all of the work in keeping a coat is getting to those places often enough that nothing has time to felt.

A slicker is the tool for that: a flat head of fine pins that go down through the top coat rather than skating over it, lifting the dead hair out of the undercoat where the tangles begin. Ancol's are stainless steel, thin and bendy, which is what lets them tease a tangle apart more gently than the teeth of a comb would. The handle is wood rather than moulded plastic, and the brush is sold as a multi-purpose tool for short, long, wiry and curly coats. This page carries the whole ladder of head sizes - the largest head measures 11 x 7cm.

• Stainless steel pins, thin and bendy
• Suits short, long, wiry and curly coats
• Lifts dead hair from the undercoat as well as the top coat
• Wooden handle, from Ancol's Ergo range
• Three head sizes, from a small head up to 11 x 7cm
• Sold as a dog grooming brush

On what a slicker will not do. It eases out a tangle. It does not get through a mat that has already felted down onto the skin, and trying is how a dog learns to hide when the brush comes out - that stage is a groomer's clippers, not a brush. Ancol also publish nothing about pin length or how much pressure the head is meant to take, so work in short passes and let the pins bend rather than pushing them in. Pick the head size by where you need to reach, not by the dog: a big head covers a back quickly but cannot get behind an ear or under a leg.

Who it's for: owners doing their own grooming between appointments, and anyone with a double-coated or curly dog who has discovered that a comb alone is not keeping up.