I have a 1/2 rot 1/2 bloodhound with short bristly hair, I have no problems with getting the hair up, but honestly, I would save some money and go with an EX anyways, you can go AWD that way and it would be a easy conversion to take a EX to SC on the 09' models, it shares the same headlights unlike the 07-08. Dont get me wrong, I love my SC, but if I could do it over again, I would have gotten a AWD EX, better resail value for some reason everywhere I look.