Extraordinary Makeover, Westie Style

I have been wanting to share some before and after pics with all of you for quite a while now, but most of my clients come every 4-6 weeks, so their before and after pics aren't very impressive. Today, however, I did a Westie (Westphalia? really spell check?) that hadn't been groomed since the end of January. PERFECT for before and after pictures!

Here he is completely dirty.

I don't think he'd been brushed for a little while...although he had very few mats, which was impressive.

Here he is washed and dried but not brushed yet.

He still looks pretty ratty, but at least he's white again. Now here he is brushed.

He refuses to look at the camera, but at least he is starting to look less homeless.

And here's the final result.

Isn't that amazing? It's dogs like this that make me LOVE my job. I get to take a scraggly grayish-yellow mop of hair and turn it into something cute and lovable. Not that he wasn't actually lovable before, I just made his outside match his inside.

In other news, one of my coworkers got one of the always lovely vagueishly (yes, I'm inventing words now; if Shakespeare can do it, so can I) picky people. These people want their dog to look EXACTLY PERFECT but are terribly vague about what they actually want (short but not too short, a little fluffy but not too long, sort of squarish round...). These can be the most frustrating customers. I can do whatever you want with your dog, but you need to be able to clearly express to me what it is you want.

And I narrowly escaped disaster with Dillin last night. He threw up about a 4-inch-long piece of bully stick that he had swallowed whole (10 hours earlier!). I took a picture, but I won't share that grossness here. So to finish, here's a picture of Hailey and Dillin watching and hearing a video of a very loud dog.