What Would You Do?..With This Face

Everyday groomers have to listen hard, to pet owners, to understand how they want us to groom their dogs.

Some owners are very specific and easy to understand exactly what they want.

Some owners kind of beat around the bush and the groomer has to ask a lot of questions to find out exactly how they want their dog groomed.

Some owners have absolutely no idea what they want and leave it up to the groomer.

Some owners leave clues on the dog as to how they want their dog groomed.

Then there are husbands.

I am going to use husbands as an example because 90% of the time, when I ask how they want the dog groomed, the husband will say; "didn't my wife tell you when she made the appointment," or "I don't know, you can call my wife."

I have no problem with calling the wife.

Most of the time the wives seem to be the ones to decided how the dogs should be groomed.

The problem comes when I can't get a hold of the wife to ask about the groom.

Sometimes I don't have to track down a wife.

Some wives call before their husbands even walk in the door.

Some wives have it timed out to call just as the husband walks in the door.

Some wives call after the husband has dropped off the dog just to check and make sure that their husbands brought the dog.

Some husbands come with notes.

The other day one of the husbands came in with a note.

This was the third time for grooming this dog.

The first time the wife brought the dog in.

The second time the husband brought the dog in and did not know what his wife wanted.

We could not get a hold of her, and she did not return our message, so I groomed the dog the same as the first time that I groomed it.

This time her husband brought a note.

The note was very short, and basically said to groom the dog the same as I did before.

But, I owner had also left me a clue on her dog.

I am sure that you are wondering what the heck I mean by 'a clue'.

This clue was actually on the dogs face.

The owner had done some scissoring of her own.

My interpretation of the clue...take the face shorter.

My grooming notes said that the owner liked the face short, but I guess that I was not taking it short enough.

How was I going to even this out without taking the face too short.

 One side was shorter then the other.

 The owner also does not want Westie ears.

She likes them to be short, but fuzzy.

Would you interpret the clue the same way that I did?

What would you do to fix it?

Clip it or scissor it?

I choose to scissor the face.

First I started with the ears.

I brushed the hair out to the sides and folded the the ear leather in half.

Then I scissored the outside of the ear leaving about a 1/4 inch of hair around the ear.

 I started scissoring the side of the face that was the shortest and had the most scissor chops in it.

I used the short areas that the owner had cut out as a guide to how short I would scissor the face.

I had to go fairly short in order to even out the hair.

Then I matched the other side up.

I hope that I took the face short enough for the owner this time.

I hope that I read her clue right.

That all the scissoring that she had done on the face meant that she wanted the face shorter than I had been taking it.

Either way, I had to scissor the face this short in order to even it out.

Actually, I think that she looks really cute with the short face.

It matches the short cut on her body. :)

Happy Grooming, MFF