Summer Hair Cuts?

Tom got his summer hair cut. I was feeling a little apprehensive about this as far as the whole "don't shave dogs with double coats because they lose their overcoat argument."

We shaved him the first time because the vet recommended when he was losing patches of fur and they were growing in black and fuzzy and he looked very patchy. He seemed much happier after he was clipped the first time. He also seemed less itchy. I've been noticing him stopping to scratch himself a lot in the past few weeks (pre hair cut).

Michael and Liza like the look. I think they clipped him too short. Definitely shorter than last time. He does not have an inch of hair like we asked for. More like 1/2 an inch. And he smells all groomer chemically which will go away, but is not my favorite smell. He had a mix of browns hair before shaving, with a little black, I think. His tail was rather scraggly.

Note: All my questions about clipping refer to a double coated dog.

So, I guess my question is if you've clipped a double coated dog once is it worse to clip them again or does it not matter? Danielle, canine major from school, said she thought the coat was likely to get worse which makes sense to me.

And we will have to be concerned about him getting sunburned...

Does clipping the coat help with itching by airing out the dog's skin? It makes sense, but then it also makes sense that clipping a dog will make them cooler and that's not really true.

Here's an article that summarizes the don't clip your double coated dogs argument, well. http://ezinearticles.com/?Not-All-Dogs-Benefit-From-A-Summer-Haircut-or-Shave-Down&id=188653