Speechless

I have seen a lot of nasty things over the last 28 years of grooming and the short time that I worked for a Vet, but I have to say that the picture I saw on my facebook the other day made my jaw drop.

Before I enlarged the picture, I knew what I was looking at, but my brain just would not except it.

The picture and story were shared from another facebook page.

I saw the picture when Serena from Lu Lu's Groom posted it on her business facebook page.

You do great work with rescues Serena.!

I hope you don't mind me passing on this story.

Click on the link below and it will take you to the facebook page of the Louisiana Boxer Rescue.

Scroll down about half way.

On the right hand side you will see a picture of a white and tan puppy.

The picture is to show what is in the puppies ear.

You will be speechless too.

As of todays update, Momma and puppies are doing well. :)

Louisiana Boxer Rescue

Happy Grooming, MFF

Hmmmmmm...

This is the reason why parents should not let their 16 year old son bring the dog in for grooming.

The sons grooming instructions:

"Can you shave him really, really close, like showing skin close, can you do that?"

"And leave a Mohawk on the top of his head, going all of the way down his back."

"Would that be okay?"

I am thinking; 'does your Mom know about this?'

"You can take him down to his skin right?"

"And, I want you to leave the hair on his chin, but no mustache."

Oookaay.

I gave my daughter the instructions, but I told her not to clip him any shorter than the #7F.

He is usually a clip down #5F.

She asked me if I wanted her to do everything he asked.

"He brought the dog in, and he is the one picking it up," I told her.

"I follow the instructions of the person who brings in the dog."

He is such a sweet boy.

I have to say...it kind of grows on you.

The son picked him up around 2pm.

He was beyond thrilled.

By the time we left work today, the Mom had not called to complain.  :)

Happy Grooming, MFF

Another Grooming Your Furry Friend Post

I posted another post on 'Grooming Your Furry Friend'.

I really struggled with this one.

First, it took me forever to go through all of my pictures.

Then I kept rewriting parts of the post.

One of the things that irritates me the most with grooming, is when a customer asks me to clip their Poodle so it doesn't look like a Poodle, or they bring me another breed, such as a Schnauzer, and they say to me: "Don't make him look like a Poodle!"

How in the world could I possibly make a Schnauzer or a Shih-tzu look like a Poodle?

Anyway, I struggled to not make little smart comments.

I struggled to not let my irritation with this particular subject show through in the post.

I hope that the post will educate Poodle owners and Poodle mix owners on the type of clips that are available for Poodles.

And, maybe help explain why their Poodles are still going to look like a Poodle no matter what clip they get on them because it is a Poodle.

One day I am not going to be able to stop myself.

One day someone is going to say "don't make him look like a Poodle," and I am going to cock my head to the side and look at them like they are nuts, and ask them...."Then why did you get a Poodle!!!!!!"

So, to my fellow groomers...check it out and see if I managed to help educate pet Poodle owners. :)

Here is the link:

Grooming Your Furry Friend

I felt like I was writing in circles.

I felt like I could not get the post to flow the way I wanted.

I want to keep it simple for pet owners to understand, but I also don't want to sound like I am talking down to them.

Ugh!  :/

Happy Grooming, MFF

Hate This.....

I had a customer come in today that, quite honestly, I thought the dog may have passed away.

The owner used to have two Bichons, but one passed away late last year and the other was having some health issues.

I have not groomed this Bichon since before Christmas.

It is very unusual for this customer to go so long between appointments.

Especially because she likes a full hand scissored Bichon cut on her dog, with a very large head and neck.

Her Bichons were almost always a little matted, especially the head and neck, when she came in fairly regularly.

This is what he looked like today.

This is him after the bath.

I always forget to take a picture before I put them in the tub. :(

Yes, he was matted ...very matted.

Now, I am sure that your thinking; 'just tell the owner that it has been too long between groomings and he is very matted and needs to be clipped very short.'

That is a lot easier said than done with this customer.

First of all, she is a nice elderly lady.

She likes playing that elderly card.

I have a lot of elderly customers that like to play that elderly card to get what they want. :/

She is also Japanese with a heavy accent, but we are pretty good at understanding each other, until...

...I try to tell her that her dog is matted.

Then she struggles to understand me, and just repeats that she likes him long and full.

I am really not trying to speak against her, really I am not.

She is a nice lady, but it is amazing how she uses that accent to suddenly have a hard time understanding me when she doesn't want to hear what I am telling her.

She will smile and pat my arm, and tell me that she trusts me and knows that I will do what she wants.

"You always do a good job," she says with a big smile on her face.

I got lucky today.

Her son was with her, and he speaks excellent English, and he said that the dog was matted, right in front of his Mom.

~Happy dance~

Now, I didn't take this to mean that I could just take a #7F blade to this dog and be done with it, but he was going to be shorter than she liked.

His head and neck were matted worse than the rest of him.

I bathed him in Best Shot and Blue shampoo.

I also really worked the Best Shot creme rinse into entire body and face.

I had HVed the mats as far away from his skin as possible.

I was able to get a #5/8HT blade through his body and legs.

The big neck had to go.

Now what to do with the head and face.

It might look nice and fluffy in this photo, but under all of that fluffy hair, are some really big, large, tight mats.

 Most of the time this dogs hair is fairly forgiving with the mats, but when they are this tight, it is too painful to demat.

His muzzle and cheeks were packed with mats.

So, what did I do?

I used an old trick that I taught myself back when I was a newbie.

I can't tell you what made me start doing this.

It may have been out of desperation at the time.

I didn't know how to say 'no' when I was new at grooming, and found myself dematting a lot of dogs that should have been clipped short.

I took that matted face and scissored it up just like I was scissoring it to finish it...mats and all.

This is the side of the face after I scissored it with the mats still in it.

**Warning: Be very careful when scissoring matted hair. Make sure where and what you are scissoring at all times. Make sure that the mat does not pull the skin up into the scissors.

 After I scissored the face, I was able to brush the smaller mats out in less than 5 minutes, without hurting the dog.

I have found that this trick works on most matting but not all.

It helps if the hair is the forgiving kind.

I have saved many a face, tail, and ears with this trick.

This is the finished, mat free face and head.

It is not as full and large as she likes it, but it will do.

It is not the groom that the owner is used to, but hopefully she will get back on schedule.

I'd say that he didn't care how he looked.

He just felt a lot better.

Side note: I have a lot of comments waiting for me to post them.

I will try to get to some of them tonight.

If you asked me a question...I am getting to them. :)

Happy Grooming, MFF

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

One Of My Grooming Nightmares Comes True!

I have to be honest, I was not sure that I was going to share this story.

Even though I took pictures, I still felt terribly embarrassed about telling anyone about what happened today.

After I thought about it, I decided that I should post this story.

I wanted this blog to be about real, everyday pet grooming.

During real, everyday pet grooming, accidents happen.

Thankfully they rarely happen in my shop.

We are beyond careful.

We actually annoy each other by always telling the other person "to be careful with that dog," "watch that dogs back," "don't take your hands off of that dog," "that dog has a bad leg, be careful," you name it, we just about drive each other crazy always watching over the others shoulder.

We are very careful about taking good care of the dogs that we groom, because we truly care for them and take pride in what we do.

We are annoyingly careful with them, because the public seems to be out to crucify pet groomers when a dog is accidentally hurt, or to sue them.

The accident that happened to me and the dog today was a first in my 28 years of grooming.

Twenty-eight years!

I was dumbfounded.

The crazy thing about it was, that I didn't even know that it had happened.

This dog is a very long time customer of mine.

She is the third Maltese that I have groomed its whole life for this owner.

This Maltese is 15 years old.

I groom her straight through and get her back to her owners as quickly as I can.

She is a very sweet dog.

She stands still as a statue on my table.

The only thing that she does now, in her old age, that she never used to do, is pull her face away when I try to scissor it.

I know, I know.

I can hear you....you're asking 'what the heck happened?!'

I clipped a wart off!

Correction...I clipped part of a wart off.

I have accidentally nicked a wart before, but I have never clipped one totally off.

How did I not know?

I was running the clipper down the back to the back leg.

I blade never caught up, or even hesitated like it caught onto, or hit something.

The #4F bladed glided through the dogs thin, straight hair very smoothly, hardly taking anything off of the top of the back.

The dog never moved, flinched, cried, or turned her head...she did not react at all.

She just kept looking out my window.

 

I didn't know I had clipped the ward off until I saw the piece of wart hanging in the hair on the dogs leg.

I even thought; "what in the world is that?"

I second I touched it, I knew.

 It barely bled at all.

I had to go pushing back her hair looking for it.

I remembered the wart.

I have seen it before.

It has been there for awhile.

I saw it in the tub.

 

I know that it is no excuse, but once her hair was dry and covering the wart, I forgot about it. 

The wart was the kind that has a solid piece to the body and an extra piece that hangs off of the rest of the wart by a tiny bit of skin.

I think that that is why the dog didn't feel anything, and why the blade clipped it off so easily.

Only another groomer knows that feeling that goes through you when you know that you have nicked a dog.

It is beyond upsetting.

I did not get into this business to hurt a dog.

I can't tell you how thankful I was that the dog didn't seem to feel a thing.

 Even when I was cleaning the rest of the wart, that sweet little Maltese didn't move or flinch.

She was wonderful, which only made me feel even worse.

Of course I was still in shock.

I kept looking at the piece that had been clipped off shaking my head.

Twenty-eight years!

 It cleaned up very nicely.

I was amazed that it hardy bled.

The blood you saw in the picture above was it.

Warts are notorious for bleeding.

Sometimes just hitting one with a comb will make it bleed like crazy.

The arrow shows the little piece of skin that the other piece was attached to.

Even while I am writing this and looking at the pictures, I still can't believe that it happened.

The #4F blade has always glided over warts without cutting them.

Something else to worry about now when I clip a dog. :/

 Another really sad part about this whole thing was, that this was the only wart she has on her.

The only one!

 It's not  like she was covered with them, and I hit one trying to avoid another.

I just failed all of the way around.

 After I had cleaned the wart out, and let the wart air dry, I combed the hair back over the wart.

Please tell me that you can see how I forgot about it.

Out of sight out of mind. :(

I know, I know that is no excuse.

This will bother me for weeks.

Yes, of course I told the owner.

I would not knowingly let a dog, that I cut, walk out of my shop without telling the owner what happened.

It wasn't the dogs fault.

Nothing was distracting me.

She didn't move suddenly.

I f**d up.

It was all my fault.

Yes, I know that accidents happen.

The owners were great.

No, it does not make me feel any better. :(

Watch out for those warts!

Don't forget that they are there.

You don't want to feel like I feel right now. :/

Happy Grooming, MFF