What Would You Do? #1

I love the show...What would you do?

I had a dog in today that made me think of that show.

You know the kind of dog.

The one where the owner comes in and gives you instructions that has you scratching your head.

You stand there looking at the dog thinking; 'What should I do on this dog?'

It also made me wonder 'What would another groomer do?'

How would another groomer deal with the instructions that the owner gave me.

I thought that it would be fun to tell you what the owner said and then show you what I did.

 This little Coton de Tulear has a very fine soft coat, with a little bit of a brittle, wiry coat on top.

Her Mom does a really good job of keeping her combed out.

She only had a few mats here and there.

They are the irritating kind of little pin mats that your comb glides right over.

The Owners Instructions:

Shorten her legs pretty good so that they don't mat so much.

(She hates having her legs brushed.)

Shorten the body a little so that she still keeps her natural look.

Trim up around the eyes.

Now...how to trim the legs short, but leave the body basically long without making her look silly.

What I decided to do:

First I trimmed around the feet.

Then I combed all of the hair on the leg up.

I decided that I would scissor the bottom half of the legs to about an 1" to an 1 1/2" left.

I slowly scissored up the leg till I felt that it was enough.

Then I let the rest of the hair fall back down.

I lightly scissored the rest of the leg tapering and blending the upper part of the leg to the lower, shorter part of the leg.

You got that?

That didn't make a bit of sense did it?

Her hair is so thin that I didn't have to take a lot off to blend it.

Because the inside of her legs tend to mat a lot, and was already thinned out from Mom dematting her, I clipped the inside of the back legs with a #4F blade.

The front leg was a little more challenging.

I combed and held up the hair that I did not want to take short.

Then I scissored half way up the front legs leaving the same amount of hair as I did on the back leg.

 I scissored all of the way up to the elbow on the inside, back of the front leg.

Got that?

I am on a roll here trying to describe what I did, aren't I?

Hopefully, if I am not making any sense to you, the pictures will help. :)

Then I let the the hair at the top of the leg fall.

Again I blended and tapered the upper part of the leg into the lower part.

As you can see, I hair on her body is very fly away.

It has a mind of its own.

Because the owner wanted to leave the body as natural as possible, I went over it with thinning shears, being careful not to cut too much, because her hair is so thin.

I just wanted to neaten it up and blend a bit.

Well, that is what I did.

What would you have done?

The owner loved it.

Oookay....(wipe sweat of forehead)

Did I like it?

Not really.

I would have loved to scissor up her body more..but she still looks cute.

Side Note:

The owner of the two Goldendoodles that I groomed last week and posted about a couple of days ago....the two that I said were so easy to groom...

She called back yesterday to say that she absolutely loved them and wanted them groomed like that every time.

So, whats the problem with that?

That was the way I groom them every time!!

Happy Grooming, MFF