Dirtiest Dog Ever?

Listen to the video clip while looking at the following pictures for added amusement ;-)

(The music starts at 0:15, don't cheat and look ahead - if you time it right, this is awesome, I promise!)

This may not be the dirtiest dog I have ever groomed, but he is certainly in the top 5*. I work in a major metropolitan area - when I worked in the outlying suburbs, we would get the occasional farm dog, but now that I work closer to the city, farm dogs are few and far between. This guy had just been at the dog park.

Obviously.

How long do you suppose it took me to wash all that mud out of his hair?

It took 3 scrubs and 50 minutes just to wash him.

Then it took another hour to dry him (we groom all dogs straight through at my shop, so kennel drying was not an option).

The owner was almost 10 minutes late for her appointment, so that means I didn't even start his haircut until he had been there for two hours already - and he was only scheduled for a 2-hour appointment!!! Luckily he was my last dog of the day and I had an extra hour to work until close.

Because who doesn't love working more than an hour later than expected?

Here he is clean and a little bit roughed in. Just in case you weren't sure how dirty he was, go back and look at the original picture and compare the color of his non-muddy fur to the color of his actually clean fur.

I had to take his entire stomach down to a little less than half an inch.

Because of course he couldn't just be filthy, he had to be matted, as well.

I had to take his neck down to 1/4 inch.

The owner had wanted me to only take about half the length off his body (knowing his neck and stomach would be shorter), but his body was a little bit matted, also. Having spent two hours just washing and drying this dog, I was not about to spend half an hour dematting so that he could look ridiculous with a banded neck and false skirt and fluffy body.

So I used my longest blade, 5/8", all over his body. He still had a little fluff, he wasn't naked, and it blended well into the short spots. 

He may not be as fluffy as his mom wanted, but I think he turned out darned cute, considering what I had to work with. He hadn't been in for almost 3 months.

One more time, just to make it easy on you, here is the before and after side by side.

        

                                    

Yes, that's the same dog.

And you probably weren't asking yourself, but just in case you were wondering what the tub looked like afterwards...

...And that's after I had cleaned the half of the tub nearest the drain.

Still think dog groomers have an amazing job where we get to play with puppies all day? 

*I wrote this post yesterday but didn't post it. Today it occurred to me that I have done Labs and Goldens that were that muddy, but this Doodle was probably the hairiest muddy dog I have ever seen.