The CoatHook Pet Comb

The Folks Behind the CoatHook

The CoatHook was conceived of, designed, and produced by us, Lisa and Sheldon Perkins, with the inspiration and help of the many fostered and adopted cats and dogs in our lives.

Lisa Perkins, the CoatHook Undercoat Only Pet Comb inventor, with cats Buddy and Cosmo

Lisa came up with the idea for The CoatHook back in 2011 while handcrafting with her senior cat, Cosmo, on her lap (that's him in the black-and-white coat). She found that a very tiny crochet hook worked well to remove loose fur in areas of Cosmo’s coat that he could no longer reach to groom due to his age. She envisioned a comb with a full array of tiny hooks and appealed to her husband Sheldon, a product developer, to create it for her.

Lisa is an avid animal welfare advocate and rescuer. She has co-founded and served on the boards of numerous dog and cat rescue groups including Maine Lost Dog Recovery Buddy Up Animal Society, and Old Dogs New Digs.


Sheldon Perkins, Co-Inventor of the CoatHook Undercoat Pet Comb

Sheldon put to use his background as a product developer for outdoor industry giant, L.L.Bean, in making the CoatHook concept a reality. First, he built a few crude prototypes to test out the concept, and when those worked really well, he coordinated and managed the help of industrial engineers and a manufacturer to design and draw plans for an injection-moldable CoatHook.

Sheldon is an avid animal welfare advocate and is always ready to help Lisa with her lost-dog search efforts, whether that’s hauling and setting live traps in the field or grilling aromatic sausages to draw in fearful dogs. He has developed branding, messaging, and collateral for several dog and cat rescue groups.


Here are the cats and dogs in our lives who played a very important part in making the CoatHook happen — they inspired us and provided shedding coats to test prototypes on.

Cosmo, Buddy, Dab, Brandon, and Rocky all grew older and passed on since we started this project, and they will remain forever in our hearts.

The cats behind The CoatHook

We fostered and then adopted Dixie in July 2015, and her double collie / shepherd coat, which shed substantially through the months of August through October, has been an outstanding test for the CoatHook. Here's the mountain of fur we combed out of Dixie with the CoatHook this season!

Dixie the dog with a huge pile of combed out fur