Tuesday's Tip # 21 Cleaning the Face

I don't know about other groomers, but if a dogs face is not clean and fresh smelling, the dog is dirty to me.

It drives me absolutely crazy when I spend a while scrubbing a face, two or three times, and it still smells when I am drying it.

Getting these dirty faces clean.

Dry eye crust.

Chunks of food around the mouth.

Those stinky long breads, with mats, food, rawhide, you name it, it's in that beard.

Those little old dog faces that are full of food and medicine.

If you have been following my blog, you know that I am a hand washer, and that I don't have a problem with the type of shampoo systems other groomers like to use, as long as the dog comes out clean.

But, I do have to say that I don't think that you can really get a face clean without hand washing it.

Getting those fingers in there, and scrubbing every inch of that face.

I like to pump full concentrated shampoo from the gallon to use on the faces.

I  rub it around on my fingers.

 Then I start scrubbing the face.

I scrub, rinse, then scrub again.

Now here are a couple of tips that I use to get the face as clean as possible.

First, I suggest scrubbing the face at least twice.

Between soap ups, pour some diluted backing soda mixture on the face, rinse and then soap up again.

The baking soda takes away the soap residue from the first shampooing and also helps get rid of that yucky face odor.

 NOTE:

I do not pour Baking soda mixture over the head.

I do not want to take a chance of getting it in the eyes.

I carefully pour over each side of the mouth and bread, rinse it and then soap up the face again.

The second tip;

If a face has a lot of matting, food or rawhide in it, I let it soak, do my usual soap up, and then I finish by putting full concentrated creme rinse on the mustache and beard.

With the creme rinse still in the hair, I use a fine tooth comb to comb out all of the softened food and rawhide, or loosen up the matting a little.

Sometimes I am able to comb out all of the matting.

Warning:

Be very careful and gentle when combing wet skin. You could scrap and irritate the wet, tender skin.

All of the eye crust and food is gone.

The mats and rawhide are gone, and the beard smells nice.

The face is bright, white and fluffy again.

Hope this helps.  :-)

Happy Grooming, MFF