Puppies

Puppies. Everybody loves them. They're cute and adorable and fluffy and innocent.

But you know how you have to train a puppy to do its business outside, not chew on furniture, and come when called? Puppies also need to be trained how to be groomed. This includes learning that things like the water, dryer, clippers, and scissors won't hurt them as well as learning how to stand still.

Here's a 5-month-old Labradoodle puppy I groomed on Sunday.

This was her very first groom, and she was matted down to the skin. The only option was to shave her...and she was terrified of the clippers. This is obviously the before picture. I had intended to take an after picture, as well, but I had to groom 20 minutes past close and her owner was sitting around waiting that entire time. All I could leave was her ears and tail; everything else had to be shaved. She did OK (eventually) for having her body shaved, but her face was the most matted thing of all, and that's where she was most terrified of the clippers. That's also one of the easiest places to cut a dog. The other groomer had already left by the time I got to her face, so it was an adventure trying to wrestle her alone to shave her face. I succeeded, but the end result wasn't very pretty. At first blush, her owner said she looked amazing and thanked me profusely. I wonder what he thought when he got home and saw how choppy and uneven her face really was?

The most frustrating thing about puppies for a groomer is that many (most? all? I don't even know) groom puppies at a discount to encourage people to bring their puppies in early and often to get them used to everything. This is brilliant when people take advantage of it, but it can be frustrating in situations like the matted, terrified puppy above (groomers get paid by commission only, usually) when we're doing more work than on a well-behaved adult but getting paid less. The good outweighs the bad, of course, because many people do bring their puppies in a lot starting at 2 or 3 months old, which is exactly what we want, and many of those puppies grow up to be well-behaved adults.

Here is another puppy where pricing bit me in the butt.

This is a six-month-old Wheaten puppy. A very, very large Wheaten puppy. And crazy (as Wheatens tend to be). And the owners just wanted about an inch taken off all over (his hair was at least 4-5 inches long). So now I have to do a somewhat difficult haircut on a crazy, wiggly, scared-of-the-clippers-I-am-trying-to-skim-him-with puppy. All for a smaller commission because he's only 6 months old.

Now let me emphasize that this all works out okay in the end. Most puppies grow up to be well-behaved, and puppies are the best way to get regular request clients. And they definitely are cute, and it feels good to make them even cuter. The craziness is all just part of the job.

To finish, here is a puppy picture of Hailey that her original owner emailed to me. I got her when she was five months old and nowhere near this tiny.