You Want Me to Groom -What-?

Grooming.  Honestly, I effing hate grooming in general.

I'm not talking about bathing.  Bathing and drying I don't have a problem with.  It's when you're pulling out clippers & scissors and dog nail clippers that I start having a problem.

I grew up in a dog-showing home that had cocker spaniels.  We had (at any given moment) a montage of at least 10 dogs.  They were (at any given time during the week) all in various stages of grooming.  So most of my formidable years were spent grooming SOMETHING every weekend.

I'm not sure if anyone who wasn't subject to that sort of thing can relate.  When you want to hang out with friends or go to the skating rink, and you mother says it's okay -- after you give Sprite and Irish a pet clip, wash three other dogs, and make sure all the crates are taken outside and scrubbed -- then you start to get a bit of resentment.

So I am REALLY, REALLY good at giving dogs a cocker spaniel haircut.  Especially a pet clip.

I am REALLY REALLY bad at any other type of doggy haircut.  Especially on a dog who is such an undefinable combination of breeds that there really is no set or good way to determine how to "properly" groom her.  [Read: Sadie]

All past dogs in my life, if they required grooming, have been given some modification of a cocker spaniel pet clip.  My old shih-tzu, Pepper, probably got the worst of it when I had him.  In fact, I actually brought him to a few dog shows where his haircut was so ... strange ... that people asked me what breed of dog he was.

So having said that, now let me say this:  I groomed Sadie over the weekend.

She looks ... interesting...

If nothing else, she will shed less & will be a bit cooler.  She doesn't look as strange as when I shaved her completely down about a year ago... but still pretty strange.  I took video, too, and I'll be posting that at some point within the next few weeks.

But I didn't take video as an instruction or informational type of video.  The results at the end will make that self-evident.

I did it because regardless of the results, and regardless of how I feel about grooming in general, grooming your dog is beneficial to both you AND your dog -- and unless Fluffy's a champion show dog with going into the ring who's trying for perfection, it doesn't freaking matter what the end result is like.

But I will be getting more into that when I put up the video.  :)

In the meantime, here is a video of a lab in a bathtub getting a bath.  This dog is more relaxed, I think, than I have ever been in my entire life.  And that's saying something: