Shedding: The natural process of casting off old hair to make room for new growth or to thin out a thick winter coat to better deal with warmer days. Natural or not, I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that nothing tests the love of dog like shedding season.

I’ve seen memes picturing adorably happy dogs that say, “I’m not shedding, I’m sprinkling tiny fibers of love.” And I say, “Oh, I’m feeling the love alright!” I feel it when I pull the lint roller out of my desk drawer at work. I feel it when I double wash the sheets. I feel it when I roll the vacuum out of the closet for the 4th time this week. The love is palpable, messy, and alarmingly hairy. It’s called shedding and it has seasons, usually two a year.

At one point, along with three dogs, our household had five girls (humans) all with long hair. Our vacuum got a daily workout and its roller brush required frequent hair extraction aided by sharp scissors. With that much hair to contend with, I was grateful for the breed of our dogs: Labradors, all three. Oh, there was shedding alright, but Labrador hair is springy, not the weaving type of such breeds as Golden Retrievers. Springy-haired or not, our dogs required frequent brushing, yielding astonishingly large piles of hair. Early summer seemed to be the worst, but fall had its own fur challenges. We’d brush and brush, vacuum and vacuum, yet never seem to catch up.

“If we wove textiles, we’d need look no further than brushing day.”

That was then, but these days, our household contains only one dog and only one long-haired human (me). You’d think this would mean an easier hair-management system, but you’d be wrong. The household dog is a mixed breed with a nearly white coat. Truth be told, my hair gets whiter by the year, so eventually, we’ll match. Whereas my hair belies my age, Daisy’s coat speaks to the mystery of her breeding. The shelter listed her as mostly Labrador, but there are signs that make us suspect that to be more of a guess than a fact. For one, she has a curly tail—not a full circle or a corkscrew, but definitely an upward arc. Her coat also appears to have faint beige patches, especially her winter coat, and her little bare belly has patches too. She also has an undercoat that makes her as soft as a bunny rabbit. None of these traits are very Lab-like. Also, unlike a sleek, shiny Labrador, the hair she sheds is the weaving kind. Oh, the horror of weaving hair.

Weaving hair creates unique cleaning challenges, especially during shedding season. Peak shedding season hasn’t hit yet, but fall is upon us, and we know what’s coming. We first notice that her coat gets tufty—that is, little tufts of fur poke out of her coat, especially on her withers. We find tufts left on the ground and the furniture. That’s the prompt to double our brushing efforts. Immense piles of hair accumulate with each brushing—enough to make a whole new dog, or so we joke. If we wove textiles, we’d need look no further than brushing day.

If it were solely tufts that we had to deal with, we’d simply brush them away or suck them up with the vacuum. But no. Along with the tufts, come individual hairs that cover every surface. Nothing is safe. Like a blanket of snow—beds, chairs, area rugs, hardwood floors—all become covered in a layer of white. You may be thinking, what’s the big deal? Just sweep and vacuum more or shake out your blankets. Of course, we do all that and also wash the bedding and throws too, which is how we learned that Daisy’s weaving hair does not easily wash out of anything. Throws and bedding are shaken over the railing before washing, but still the washing machine needs to be cleaned every time. And, although we purchased special dryer sheets that tackle pet hair, the lint trap becomes overfull with every load. And don’t even get me started on what happens to the car’s interior during shedding season.

We used to leave the guest room open to enjoy the light, but no longer. We learned the hard way that if Daisy has access to that room, no amount of washing can eradicate the hair she leaves behind. We recognize that it’s not very welcoming to pull back a freshly made bed to find tiny white hairs stuck to the sheets. And so, the room is closed unless in use. Needless to say, the housekeeping challenges are large and vexing.

I ask, how much hair can one medium-sized dog shed? The question simply cannot be answered. I suppose if we knew her breed, there might be a published expectation, but since she is certainly not a purebred, there would still be an unknown factor. I suppose we could take a scientific approach by measuring the piles accumulated by brushing or by how many times the vacuum canister requires emptying per cleaning session. We could count the tufts we pull from her fur, but that is not very scientific either. We can’t possibly find them all. I suppose the better question is, how can we survive shedding season? My survival technique is to see the brighter side. All that brushing is an opportunity to bond with Daisy through grooming. We both benefit from the loving attention and I’m hoping that with every pile of hair we gather, that’s one less pile distributed throughout the house or in the car. For the rest of it—all the hair that gets distributed throughout the house, well that vigorous housekeeping is exercise. And can’t we all benefit from more exercise?

Surviving shedding season might be different for each household. But we can all take comfort in the knowledge that, like winter weather, eventually it will abate. Suddenly, we’ll realize that the vacuuming has become less frequent, the washing machine seems to be more efficient, and the car is easier to keep clean. And, although we might forget, we can, and should, celebrate surviving yet another season of shedding.