What Would You Do?...Sweatercut?

Sweatercut!?

Have you ever heard of it?

That is what my husband came back and told me that a customer wanted on her dog.

A little history on the dog.

I groomed it two years ago.

Once.

A Pom-Pom cut, with a clean face and a bow in the topknot.

The owner loved the dog and made another appointment for the next month.

She No Showed.

That was two years ago.

The owner is a very nice lady.

I am guessing that she was too embarrassed about missing the appointment, that she waited two years to come back.

Ooooor.

She didn't even remember ever coming to us before, and just called to make an appointment at a groomer that she got out of the yellow pages.

No, I remember now.

She told my husband that she had been to us a couple of years ago when she made this appointment.

One of the mysteries of grooming.

Customers who say that they love your groom, disappear,  and then return a year or two later.

????????

Anyway, the cut she wanted this time was a little different then what I did two years ago.

The owner called it a sweater cut.

So, I was very curious when I went up to the lobby to talk to the owner.

The Sweater cut turned out to be a modified Continental cut.

No pom-poms on her hips, and the neck had been shaved out.

And the pom-poms on her legs.......

When I first saw the dog in the owners arms I thought that she had been given booties by the last groomer.

But after looking closer I could tell that the feet had been shaved.

As for the pop-poms...I am not sure what happened to them, or how I was going to repair them.

The feet had only been shaved to the first knuckle of the toes.

I was afraid that if I clipped the feet the way I usually do, it would take away the precious little hair that I had to work with for the pom-poms.

I warned the owner that the pom-poms where not done correctly the last time that the dog was groomed, and that I would do the best that I could to repair them.

I also told her that they would not be very round.

Once I got her bathed and blow dried, I stood back to see what I had to work with.

What would you do with those pom-poms?

Back leg pom-pom before -->

<-- Back legs pom-pom after.

It isn't round, but if the owner keeps coming back I can get some nice pom-poms on her in a couple of grooms.

The front pom-poms were going to be harder to make look nice.

 I was left with a very tiny pom-pom.

So out of proportion with her giant pom-pom on the body pom-pom.

I had one other problem that I had to deal with...the topknot.

It really looks over grown doesn't it?

 There was just one problem.

Can you guess?

 

The front half of it was gone.

No, the owner did not do this.

The last groomer did.

My notes from the only grooming that I had done on this dog said that the owner had asked me to shape the front of the topknot, but leave the back of the topknot long with a bow.

I actually remembered doing that the last time I groomed the dog, because it was the only time anyone asked me to groom a topknot like that.

I had shaped the front of the topknot like I normally would, only taking it shorter than I normally would, then I had tied up the hair in the back with a bow and shaped that hair to blend in with the rest of the topknot.

Did that make any sense?

 Since there was no hair to work with in the front, I just neatened it.

Then I pulled up all of the long hair in a bow and shaped it round.

She is cute, isn't she?

This is what the head looked like from the side.

So, here is the sweater cut. :/

She is so out of proportion.

But, this is what the owner wanted. :)

The most important part of this groom?

The owner was very pleased and loved it.

Yes, she did make another appointment.

I hope that she keeps it.

Happy Grooming, MFF