Here is the final batch of before and after pictures that I assembled last month and haven't posted yet.
This Cockapoo is one of my regulars. They like him to dry curly, and since we don't have kennel dryers, I do the whole haircut before the bath and send him home damp so that he dries curly. They usually like him to have this ENORMOUS teddy bear head. Here it is all brushed out - he didn't want to look at the camera, so that is why my hand is in the picture holding his head up.
Here's another view of that huge head.
This particular time, the father and teenage daughter dropped him off instead of the mother, and they thought it would be hilarious to do something different with his head - they decided on a mustache and big topknot. Here's how it looks all fluffy before the bath.
And here he is after the bath. Sadly, I don't know how he looks after he dries, but you can see his ears and topknot curling already. (Side note - I did him again recently, and the mom wanted me to go back to the big poofy teddy bear head.)
This Westie was a new client. The owner comes in and says, "The terror - I mean terrier ;-) - is here." And he kinda was a terror. Here he is before the bath.
And here's my hand after blow drying him - he scratched me to pieces!
And here he is after.
This little guy is another of my regulars. I just did him again the other day, although this picture is from a couple of months ago. Here he is before the bath, all curly.
Here he is after the bath, all nice and fluffy.
I take him pretty short in the summer, but she wanted him a little longer for winter. See all the orange scraggly stuff on his back? I decided to just scissor that off without using a blade or snap-on comb first.
Here's his back after I scissored him. I'm pretty impressed with how smooth I got it.
And here's the final result. He's such a good boy; I just love grooming him.
This last dog is a Spanish Water Dog. They generally have their hair corded, but these people wanted her to look curly rather than corded. Here she is before I did anything to her.
I decided to use the high velocity dryer to loosen up all the curl and get rid of some of the dander, then I brushed her out.
Here she is after some scissoring. Since they wanted her curly, I did the haircut before the bath.
Here she is, damp and miserable, ready to go home and dry curly. Her owners were THRILLED that I didn't shave her. I haven't seen her again, but I hope they do come back soon - she was really good to groom.
I hope you've enjoyed these pics! Hopefully I'll have something of substance for you in a few days.
About a month ago, I attended a Tango dance lesson that helped me change the way I see myself. I wanted to write about the experience sooner, but didn't get around to it. I've decided to write this post as if I had written it that very night after coming home because it seems like it will be easier to remember everything that way. Anyway, here we go!
So yesterday, somebody I know went to a board game meetup group. I forgot meetup.com even existed, so I thought I would get on and see if I could find any groups that interest me. As I was perusing all the groups in my area, I came across one for people who have traveled/would like to travel/are interested in other cultures, countries, languages, etc. This is right up my alley!
I have always been interested in other cultures and languages. I started studying French in 7th grade, even though Spanish would have been much more practical in the area of the country where I live. I continued studying French through a couple years of college and even tried learning Spanish in college, too, but I literally walked from my French class to my Spanish class, and I was having a hard time keeping the languages separate. "Hola, me llamo Jennifer, je suis tres bien, muchas gracias mon ami!" After I dropped out of college, I bought an "Italian for Dummies" book, but the French and Spanish I already knew were taking up too much space in my brain for me to learn another romance language.
Then, a few years ago, I fell in love with Bollywood movies and music and Indian culture as a whole. (I blogged about this last fall here.) Most of my friends and family pretty much think I'm crazy for having this obsession. Most people I know don't like subtitles, and a lot of people hate musicals. But for me, I've always loved musicals, I love a good love story, and I love color. Bollywood has all that and more!
Anyway, I am alone in this passion; I don't have anybody to share it with. I haven't traveled much but would love to if I could afford it. So this group for people who love other countries, etc had my name written all over it! And the super duper extra bonus? The very next meetup was this Tango dance lesson! I LOVE to dance. When I was in my mid-twenties, I used to go out country dancing 2-3 times a week. I can two-step, triple-step, triple-two-step, waltz, line dance, and do a little bit of swing. I briefly took a Bollywood dance class, but I was too out of shape to keep up. I've always wanted to do more dancing in more styles, but I was always afraid to go alone and not have a partner to dance with. So here we have a group of people all going together; maybe some of the men will dance with me after the lesson during the "practica"?
This group is also doing a masquerade ball for Carnivale, which looks really interesting (I blogged about that here).
Anyway, I didn't have anything to wear for the masquerade and I was worried it would take a long time to find a cheap, nice-looking dress that fit, so I decided to start shopping today since I only have a couple of weeks before the masquerade.
Dress shopping turned out to be fun! I've lost about 35 pounds, so I wasn't really sure what size I am anymore. I grabbed a bunch of size 16s and size 18s to see what would fit. To my surprise, some of the 16s fit!!! I don't even know how many years it has been since I have fit into a size 16. And the dresses were so cheap (Yay for Ross!) that I could afford one dress for the masquerade and another for tonight's Tango lesson. I walked out of that store grinning from ear to ear - I'm starting to look good!
Time was slipping away from me, so I ran home to shower and get ready. This is not a great picture, and I am obviously not a Photoshop wizard, but imagine a beautiful dark purple dress that makes me look like a shape other than a rectangle or maybe an apple. I felt curvy and beautiful in that dress!
So I walked into the hall where the dance lesson was to be held full of confidence. I felt beautiful, and smart, and funny, and WORTHY. I walked in and headed for the area where the group was supposed to meet. Not having been to any other meetups with this group, I didn't really know anybody other than a few small pictures online. I saw a couple of women about my age sitting off to one side. Being terribly shy, it was somewhat difficult, but with my newfound confidence, I walked up and asked if they were with the group. They said yes, so I introduced myself, sat down, and started talking to them.
Talking to other women should not be a huge ordeal for a straight woman, but I get so anxious and shy that I usually hang out alone, too afraid to talk to anybody, so having the confidence to start talking to these two women was more encouraging and positive for me than you can even imagine.
During the dance lesson, which included a lot more people than just the ones in our group, all of the men had to shuffle around to different partners throughout the class - and even though there weren't quite enough men to go around, I managed to always have a man to dance with, so that was exciting! Especially since half the class was about leading and following, and the women had to place their hands on the mens' chests and let the men push them (terrible description, sorry). Anyway, that would have been awkward to do with a woman, especially one I had never met before.
I took care to remember the names of all the men I danced with, especially the younger ones, and after the lesson was over, I went up to one of the men and asked him to dance.
This blog post is getting to be too long, sorry. Anyway, long story short, I danced and chatted with several men all night long, and one in particular. He had experience with Salsa and Swing dancing, and I had the Country experience, and we had just had that first Tango lesson - so we wound up doing this crazy mishmash dancing. It was so much fun!
I still can't believe I had the nerve to chat up men all night long. I was even flirting - or trying to anyway. I've NEVER been brave about talking to men.
At the end of the night, I offered my number to the guy I had talked to and danced with the most, saying that if he ever wanted a Swing or Salsa partner, that he should give me a call. He was very friendly and gracious and even put my number in his phone in a way that he would remember who I was.
I have no idea whether or not he'll call - but it doesn't even matter. Just the fact that I was so brave all night, that I was able to talk and flirt with men, the fact that I had the nerve to give my phone number to a guy...
I've done an interesting variety haircuts over the last couple of days, from long to short and including a Mohawk, which I hardly ever get to do.
I may as well go in order. My first dog of the day yesterday was a Miniature Poodle - half an hour late, but probably not her fault. Anyway, here she is before the bath.
Her owner told me that she can be snappy, and that she had been okay with her first groomer, but ever since that groomer left, she had been snappy and hated to be groomed, so she decided to try somebody else.
So I went really slowly with her, because I could see how scared she was, and I brushed her out as gently as I could. She was actually fine; she didn't give me a single problem.
Here she is all done - 2 1/2 hours later, putting me WAY behind.
(Side note - she came back today and said this haircut was still too long, so I took her a little shorter. I didn't have time to take a follow-up pic.)
This next dog is a Brussels Griffon, although they like his face and body short, so he almost looks like a Pug with a Mohawk.
Isn't he cute?
My last dog of the day yesterday was this Lhasa Apso. He looked okay when he came in - until I took his sweater off. Do you see how his body looks smoother than his legs? That's actually because the wool sweater had basically knitted his own hair into a sweater of its own - everything the sweater touched was one solid pelt, and the legs were actually in pretty good shape.
Here is a close-up look at the matting on his body. See how you can't see his skin no matter how much we separate the hair?
When I was first learning how to groom, I was taught to NEVER wash a matted dog, because water makes mats worse. I also give this same advice to my clients. There IS one exception to the rule - IF you have a high velocity dryer, and you have the time to dry the dog ALL THE WAY straight through, this will loosen up the mats.
Here he is after the bath and blow dry.
He even changed colors! He was a little dirty.
Here is another close-up of the mats, this time after the bath and blow dry. See how the "sweater" came apart into smaller mats that aren't right on top of the skin?
(It's a good thing I proofread my posts first - I had completely forgotten to add this picture!)
Anyway, If I had shaved him before the bath, like I was originally taught, I would have had to shave him all the way down to the skin with my shortest blade. By loosening the mats up first, I wound up with this final result.
Still pretty short, but not down to the skin bald.
So that, with a couple of dogs I didn't get pictures of, was yesterday.
Today I got to start with this Cockapoo. His front legs were really choppy, but since that was the only place on him that looked like that, I suspect it is from him chewing on himself rather than his owners cutting him at home.
Here's a close-up of those funky legs.
Are you kidding me?! I just now realized that I apparently forgot to take after pictures. Sorry, folks. Anyway, he was a little bit matted, but I got him all brushed out and did a light trim on him.
Then there's this cute Brussels Griffon puppy. I think she's about 5 months old now. She is so wiggly that it is hard to do anything with her. Her owner brought treats today, which helped a little, but not quite enough. In the meantime I am glad she doesn't have much hair yet. I still wish I could trim under her eyes better, but I just couldn't hold her head still enough; there was too much risk of me injuring her.
My last dog of the day today was a Doodle, one of my requests. Here he is when he first came in.
He gets taken down with a short blade every time he comes in, so I find it faster to shave him quickly before the bath so that there is less hair to wash and dry. I forgot to take a picture after the shave and before the bath, but here he is directly after the bath and blow dry.
Notice how uneven he is? When I shave a dog before the bath (and I'm not then sending them home damp to dry curly), I'm going for speed over style. The groomer who taught me to do this once said, "Sometimes the dog looks like it has mange when I put it in the tub."
Here's the final result. As you can see, they do like him quite short.
He's such a good boy!
Anyway, I have another personal blog post in the wings, but I wanted to get out at least one dog post in between each personal post. I am The Writing GROOMER after all.
(I wrote this last night but decided not to post it until today.)
So I was driving home at 11 tonight and I started laughing so hard that it caused a coughing fit. I had to force myself to calm down and just smirked the rest of the way home.
Now let me start at the beginning.
When I was 21, I had dropped out of school and moved back in with my parents. All of my friends were still in college, so I had no friends around and I wanted to get out of the house a bit. I had always loved to dance, though I had never really had any lessons, and I had heard about this Country Western bar in town that did line dance classes on Tuesday nights for $3 and free beginners lessons on the two-step, triple-step, triple-two step, and the waltz on Wednesday nights. I don't remember which I did first, but I started going to more and more lessons and became more confident in my dancing.
Eventually men started asking me to dance, and as I got better, I realized I was pretty good. One gentleman in particular, somewhere in his 40s or 50s, taught me SO much. I suppose he introduced himself the first time we danced, but I couldn't remember his name, so in my head and to my friends and family, I always referred to him as Purple Shirt Guy. He had a Thursday night shirt and a Saturday night shirt, and they were both purple. Anyway, once I built up my endurance, we would dance for half an hour straight before I would need to stop for water.
I was never the skinny, beautiful girl who got asked to dance constantly, but I had a few guys who would make it a point to dance with me, especially my Purple Shirt Guy. I also learned quite a few line dances so that I could dance without a partner. And when I was on the dance floor - I felt special.
How do I even explain this in a way it makes sense?
I've always suffered from low self esteem. I always thought that I was never good at anything, I was just the smart fat chick that guys ignored. But when I realized I was actually a pretty good dancer...I suddenly felt better about myself. My weight didn't matter (as much). I always swore that someday I WOULD be the skinny chick that all the guys wanted to dance with.
Anyway, for a while in my early- to mid-twenties, I was dancing there and another Country bar 2-3 nights a week. I grew up a lot in those bars. I met, made out with, and even dated guys from the bars. Guys constantly told me I was light on my feet. It didn't matter how heavy I was, because I could be led so easily. I was GOOD.
A few years ago, life and depression got in the way of me going out and dancing. I put on about 50 pounds and became somewhat of a recluse.
So then last fall, shortly before my 30th birthday, I decided things needed to change. I was finally feeling like a normal human being (i.e. not depressed) and I was ready to take charge of my life. I started Weight Watchers Online and joined Curves (a gym for women). I lost about 35 pounds, then I joined a meetup group and took a Tango lesson last month. Around that same time, I went back to one of the Country bars - and remembered just how much I love to dance.
Fast forward to tonight. I had been to each bar again once or twice before tonight. I decided to go take the $3 line dance class (still only $3 after nearly 9 years - amazing, right?)
So I got there about 15 minutes before the class started. I put my coat on a chair (I keep my ID, money, phone, and keys in my jeans pockets so that I don't need to bring in my purse and leave it unattended) and stood next to the dance floor watching the line dancers. Every Tuesday night, the same group of people do all the line dances that have ever been taught on a Tuesday. I certainly don't remember any of the ones I learned that long ago, because the Tuesday night line dances are never seen in either bar any other night of the week. So I was just watching to see if I could pick up some steps.
A few minutes later, this blonde girl comes up to me and asks me where people usually put their coats. I told her that the coat check is closed on Tuesdays since it is such a slow night, but she could put her coat on a chair at the same table my coat was at. She thanked me, put her coat down, then introduced herself and we started chatting.
Even though she is 34, she reminded me of myself when I was 21 and I was just starting to venture out on my own and discover myself. In her case, she has just recently gotten out of a bad relationship, and she is learning how to be single again.
So we chatted until the dance class started, about 15 minutes late. We danced next to each other during the lesson, then retreated to our table to chat more after the class. At this point, I had high hopes that the DJ and/or band would start playing a few Cowboy Cha-Chas. It's a line dance that you can do alone or with a partner. It's a pretty popular dance done to a certain beat (I'm not a musical person, so I can't tell you what time it is, I can only hear it and know it's the right beat), so I figured I could at least do a few of those and call it a night.
I did get in a few Cha-Chas, and my new friend was impressed but too scared to get out and try it. Eventually, the DJ played a song that fit the beat for the line dance we had learned, so everybody got out and tried to remember all the steps we had just learned.
Shortly after that, my blonde friend had to go. We exchanged phone numbers in the hopes of meeting up at the bar more often, at least for Tuesday night line dance lessons, and maybe Saturday nights. I had made a few bar friends so many years ago, and they took me under their wing, so it is really nice to return the favor to somebody. Maybe we will become real friends one day.
Anyway, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that less than 5 minutes after she left, a good looking guy came over and asked me to dance. Really?! Dancing with a guy was the last thing on my mind, but needless to say, I was THRILLED!
Come to find out, he's from South Dakota, but he's in town visiting his sister who is in the hospital. He and two of his brothers and one of their cousins were all at the bar celebrating Mardi Gras. I invited them to join my table, and next thing I knew, a few other girls joined into the group as well. It seemed that at least one of the girls knew the boys - through their sister maybe? I don't know.
What I DO know is that I danced at least once with each guy, and several times with the first guy. None of them were great at the two-step or triple-step, but two of them were REALLY good at swing, which is one of my weak points. But we could laugh when I messed up, and the guys were impressed at how well I did manage to keep up.
Suddenly, I felt like this beautiful, young, single, available, DESIRABLE girl. I wasn't great at the small talk, though. I didn't really bring that version of myself with me; I didn't realize I would need social flirt Jennifer. All of the guys were ranchers or farmers, so I couldn't go on and on about "Tell me what you do for a living," so I ran out of topics.
Still, my lack of conversational skills did not stop the guys from asking me to dance.
The bar wound up closing at 11, and we all went our separate ways. I will probably never see any of them again, as 3 of the 4 were headed back to South Dakota in the morning, and that is OK. The self confidence, self esteem, and all-around happiness I found tonight is irreplaceable.
This also ties in to how I felt at the Tango lesson - a blog post I have written but have not published yet. In time, I will publish that and link to it here.
Anyway, here I am, finding myself on a dance floor again. Not only do I love to dance, I love who I am when I am on the dance floor. I feel like I glow from the inside. I even have a tattoo to remind me how much I love to dance - and yet I let dancing slip away from me for so many years.
I have a fair amount of hope that I will meet my future husband on a dance floor. That's partly because I love who I am on a dance floor, and partly because I would love to spend the rest of my life with a man who at least appreciates, if not shares, my passion for dancing.
So the connection between discovering myself 9 years ago and tonight in the exact same bar is what caused me to laugh while driving me home. It really is funny how life works sometimes. I was just looking to get some exercise by dancing, and I got so much more than that.
For a variety of reasons, I have not written much about my personal life for the last few months, despite the byline of this blog saying I write about "life in general." I've decided to change that, at least temporarily. I'll bring back the dog pics soon, but I do have one or two personal blog posts that I want to write now.
I went to a Venetian-style Carnivale Masquerade last night.
OK, it wasn't quite as cool as the one from "Phantom of the Opera," but it was fun in its own right. I wasn't the social butterfly I wanted to be, but it occurred to me that social skills are something that need to be acquired and practiced - I can't go from being a wallflower for 30 years to the Belle of the Ball overnight.
So this got me thinking about my social skills and social life (or lack thereof).
I've always been terribly shy. I never had much self esteem, due mostly to my weight. I went from a girls' size 14 to a misses' size 14 in the space of a year when I was about 13. A shy elementary school kid with few friends became a fat teenager and settled into the life of a wallflower.
I did have a few good friends in high school, some of whom I am still friends with today, but I never went on a date, never went to Prom, never kissed a boy (more on this topic later).
When I was about 22, I started learning how to do Country dancing at a local bar. I could (and still can) two-step, triple-step, triple-two step, waltz, and line dance, and I actually got pretty good. I developed a bit of confidence about my dancing, but being overweight, I was always much too shy to ask any guys to dance; I mostly stood near the dance floor and hoped somebody would ask me to dance.
OK, let's fast forward through my 20s a bit. I was in an on-again-off-again relationship with a guy for several years, due in large part to the fact that I am bipolar but hadn't been diagnosed yet. I put on about 50 pounds, lost even more self esteem, and, the last guy I was intimate with, over a year and a half ago, had to stop halfway through the first time to run to the bathroom and throw up because he was so put off by my weight. Why I decided to give him another chance is beyond me. I'm just glad I got tired of him within a few weeks.
Needless to say, this all messed up my self esteem even worse. I also spent the better part of 2 or 3 years in a clinical depression. I stopped dancing and doing other things that I enjoy. I became a hermit and avoided other people, eventually losing many of the social skills I ever had to begin with.
Last fall, I finally got my meds completely straightened out and started feeling better than I had in a long time. I joined Weight Watchers and a gym, and I've lost almost 40 pounds in about 4 months. So now I have some self esteem to go out and start doing stuff.
A few weeks ago, somebody reminded me about meetup.com, so I decided to hop on and see if there were any meetups that interested me. That night, I found a meetup group for people who are interested in other countries, cultures, languages, etc. That sounds right up my alley! The very next night they were doing a beginner tango lesson, and I decided to go. I wrote about that here.
This same group put on a Masquerade last night, and I thought it would be a lot of fun, so I decided to go. I am going to put a pic of me in my dress and mask at the end of this blog post, but to break up the text, here's a picture of the shoes I found. I hardly ever wear heels, and the stilettos I wore to the tango lesson and my dad's wedding tore up my feet, so I needed something with a shorter heel that would stay on my feet and match my dress. These fit the bill better than I expected:
Anyway, for some reason I wasn't feeling as confident at the Masquerade last night as I was at the tango lesson a few weeks ago. I thought the mask would somehow make me less nervous, but I think the fact that everybody was wearing masks and I could hardly pick out the few people I did actually know unsettled me a little bit.
I got there early, of course, and there were only a dozen or so people spread over 6 tables and a bunch of chairs. I surveyed the room. I was tempted to go sit in a chair by the wall all by myself, since that is what the wallflower in me was screaming for, but I decided to break out of my comfort zone and sit at a table with (probably) strangers. Again, if I knew any of these people, I was hard pressed to recognize them. I settled on a table with two women who weren't talking to each other - obviously strangers, which made me feel more comfortable than sitting at a table with best friends who would talk to each other all night and ignore me.
One lady moved here from France over 20 years ago, and the other came from Moldova 14 years ago, so that was really neat for me to meet people from other countries. Unfortunately, I have a hard time hearing and understanding people in those types of loud events, and their accents made that even harder. They were as quiet as me, anyway, so we didn't talk much, but at least I had people to sit with and didn't spend the entire night alone on a chair.
I spent the next hour or so wishing the music was more dance-able (it got more and more dance-able as the night went on, but it started off with a lot of slow Italian, Spanish, and French ballads that weren't good for much apart from Ballroom dancing and the occasional tango - which I couldn't do without a partner anyway) and eyeing this guy across the room. I couldn't quite tell if he was good-looking or not, but except for a middle-aged lady who kept flitting to and from the table he was sitting at, he spent a lot of time alone. Eventually he got up from the table and stood against the wall. It took a few songs, but eventually I got up the nerve to go talk to him.
I went up to him and made some joke about him holding up the wall, and he smiled and thanked me for coming over, and we struck up a conversation. It didn't take long for me to realize -
SON OF A -----! He's gay!
PLEASE don't misunderstand me. I'm not homophobic, far from it. I have gay family members and I was very good friends with a gay guy for several years (why "was" and not "am"? Never work for friends or family members).
Let me explain why I was upset.
I have THE WORST gaydar on the planet. Always have, probably always will. It's set on reverse or something, I don't know. Pretty much every guy I had a crush on in high school turned out to be gay. Almost EVERY. SINGLE. DANG. ONE. Even in college I had a knack for pining after the gay guys. And that friend I was talking about? I had a crush on him for years. In all honesty, I was glad the reason he didn't like me as more than a friend was only because I was a woman and not because there was anything wrong with me.
Almost invariably, if I can comfortably talk to a guy, they turn out to be gay. Maybe subconsciously I know how flustered I get when talking to straight guys and find the gay ones to save some semblance of decorum?
I don't have a clue. All I know is that my reverse gaydar was in full force last night, and it was frustrating. It just makes it THAT much harder for me to find a boyfriend.
Anyway, the music had picked up a little bit, and he asked me to dance.
Now, I love to dance when I have actual steps to do. Two-step, line dance, tango, whatever - give me dance steps and/or a guy with a strong lead, and I'm a pretty good dancer. But that whole standing around swinging your arms and hips and trying to vaguely move to the music? Yeah, not my thing. Of course, for once, I wasn't going to let that stop me. I'm wearing a mask, I can make an a-- out of myself on the dance floor.
So then the guy starts dancing and...Let's just say I suddenly felt much less self-conscious about my own dancing!
Cut to...I see the guy I gave my phone number to at the tango lesson who never called me. He's dancing with the Moldovan.
Crap.
I don't blame him for not calling me. I'm actually totally cool with it - I was WAY more bold than usual that night, and he didn't actually ask for my number, I offered it. Anyway, him talking to me as much as he did that night totally made my evening, and I will always be grateful to him for that.
But.
Here's where I started wondering what to do, how to act, and what he might be thinking about me. It crossed my mind to go up to him and make some joke and try again to flirt with him, but luckily I realized that would be a bad idea. I don't want to make him uncomfortable and feel bad for not calling me.
For a while I thought, hm, maybe he doesn't see me. Maybe if I get close enough to him he'll recognize me even with a mask on. Maybe he'll come talk to me? But I can't be obvious about it. So I just did things like walk across the room near where he was dancing a few times, like to the bathroom and for water.
Eventually I realized that he was definitely not going to come talk to me, so now I need to make sure he doesn't think I'm stalking him. Now I need to make it a point to not get too close to him so that I don't make him uncomfortable. I tried to ignore him the best I could, but you know how that goes. Actually, when I did take my mind off of his location, that's when I would go get water and he would be standing next to the water table chatting up some girl or another.
DANGIT!
Needless to say, this messed up my mojo a bit last night.
I did still get to dance with several guys throughout the night, so that was pretty cool. And the lady who organized the whole event had taken suggestions from everybody on any international songs they wanted, and she played a couple of the Bollywood songs I recommended, so that was awesome! You should have seen the look on this guy's face (even with a mask he managed to wear a quizzical expression) when he saw me singing along!
Anyway, I was a little more shy than I would have liked, and first I was upset with myself for not dancing and chatting more, but then I cut myself some slack and realized that this whole thing was WAY outside my normal comfort zone, and in context, I actually did a really good job (for me).
I left shortly after midnight because I had to work this morning. (Side note - I've never seen so many taxis in my metropolitan area before - they must make all their money Friday and Saturday nights.)
I only got 4 hours of sleep last night, but it was totally worth it, and I look forward to stretching my social skills even further in the future.
Oh, and here's the pic of me in my dress and mask - with measures to further protect my anonymity. ;-)
It looks like I'm throwing a gang symbol or something, but I actually wanted to cover up the phone in my hand that I was using to take a picture.
OK, I guess that's it for tonight. The tango lesson a few weeks ago was a completely different experience as far as my social skills, so hopefully I will have a chance to write about that in the next couple of days.
This is a vast generalization, but it seems to me that (in my corner of the world, at least) hand scissoring dogs without first using a blade or snap-on comb to set the length is a dying art. It certainly isn't something I was ever taught. The longest comb I had when I first started grooming was about 2 inches, and as far as I knew, there was no way to do any length longer that and shorter than full coat, except maybe to trim the belly and legs but leave the body long. I didn't know anybody who hand-scissored. And then the new metal snap-on combs came out, and the standard went down to all haircuts being an inch or less.
Then I read this blog post: http://petgroomingthegoodthebadthefurry.blogspot.com/2012/06/hand-scissoring.html I love this blog and read it regularly. After reading this post, I decided to try to do some full-body hand scissors of my own. This blog post was written almost 8 months ago, so it has clearly taken a long time for me to find dogs with the right kind of cut and hair to practice on, but I think I have finally perfected my technique well enough to spotlight some before and after pictures.
Let's start with today and work backwards. This Cavachon was my first dog of the day today; a new client. She wasn't happy with the last groom, mostly because they took his face too short. She just wanted about a quarter of an inch taken off his body. Here is how he looked before the bath.
Sure, I could have used a snap-on comb to set the length on his haircut first, but I decided to just scissor it and see how that went. Ironically, I had a comb length in mind as I was scissoring him, and when I was done, I checked the finished length with that comb, and it was almost dead on! Anyway, here is the final result. I have to say, this is easily the best hand scissoring I've ever done on an entire dog.
Being a Cavachon, his hair was rather wavy with a lot of cow licks. Snap-on combs can't factor in cow licks (the cut winds up looking choppy), but hand scissoring can. I started as a bather almost 9 years ago and started doing cuts almost 8 years ago - I believe it's never too late to learn something new, and I definitely want to always improve my grooming skills.
I also did this Wheaten today. She is easily my favorite Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier to groom - she has the best personality! Her hair isn't that great, but at least it has gotten impressively long - when I first started grooming her, she had really bad allergies which were causing bald spots, hot spots, and thin patches and what hair there was was so fine that it matted really easily. Here she is before the bath - what a mess!
Usually most of the curl and most of the mats come out with the bath and blow dry. You can see here that this wasn't really the case today...
Here she is all brushed out - which took forever, unfortunately.
That's a pretty striking difference in coat texture from before the bath.
Anyway, her owner wanted about 1/4-1/2" off all over - basically the dog equivalent of telling your hair dresser just to take off your split ends. Her hair is much too long for a snap-on comb, so I had to scissor her whether I liked it or not.
Isn't she sweet? Side note - you can see here that she gets a Teddy Bear Head rather than the traditional Wheaten Head. I hardly do any actual Wheaten heads these days. This isn't my choice, I just don't have any customers who like that look.
And just to show you that I'm not perfect, here is a dog I did a few days ago. I think he was a Shihchon. Here he is before the bath - what a mess!!!
Luckily he only had a few mats under all of that hair. Here he is after the bath and all brushed out but before the haircut.
They wanted less than half of his length taken off, which would have been longer than my longest comb, so I had to hand scissor him. He was only scheduled for an hour and a half but wound up taking two hours - and I really feel like I should have spent a little more time polishing him up, but I had a customer who had been waiting on me to finish him up so I could start on her dog. Yeah, I would definitely like to go back in time to do some polishing, but I wanted to be fair and show you the not-so-good with the good (I could just be picky, the owner did seem pleased with the groom).
Not my best groom every, but considering this isn't something I was really even trained for, I guess I'll take it. Hopefully they will come back again and I will have enough time to polish him up next time.
OK, last one. Here is a cute Toy Poodle puppy I did a couple of months ago. It was his first haircut, and they just wanted a light trim all over. Here he is before the bath.
There isn't a whole lot I can do about tear stains aside from shave them out, but his hair was so fine that his actual skin was stained and there wasn't much of anything I could do about it. Anyway, isn't he precious?
Most of the groomers I know now and have known in the past don't/won't/can't do this kind of hand scissoring, so I take particular pride in the fact that this is something I decided to tackle and perfect. Hopefully the word will get out that there IS a groomer out there doing cuts longer than an inch!
