How to permanently apply hair grooms to skeletal mesh?

Hello,

I am trying to replace Spyro’s model in the Reignited Trilogy with a model of a dog with some hair. My impression is that, in order to do so, I need to reduce the model down to only the physics object, skeletal mesh, and the skeleton itself. Is there a way to permanently merge hair grooms with a model? I’ve created the grooms and the bindings to the skeleton:


I can add the grooms in manually to a particular instance of the skeletal mesh in the scene, as I did on the right side of the image, but the grooms don’t truly apply to the skeletal mesh. Meaning, if I place another skeletal mesh in the scene, it will appear without hair, or if I edit the skeletal mesh it appears without hair:

And if I cook the objects, the model comes out without any hair.
I want the hair to be attached to the skeletal mesh permanently. How do I do that? Isn’t that what the bindings are supposed to do? And if so, why is it not working?
Any help is appreciated, thank you!

You create a blueprint actor, Add skeletal mesh to it, add groom and binding to the skeletal mesh.
Then you drag in the blueprint actor that has all those elements already combined.