flyingduster

today I groomed Paris... and kitties in the yard later...

omg, 6 days in and 47 pages!!!! wow! Jan 6th: I should work out how to edit pics too, I'm sure they can be better with proper editing rather than boring pics...

I've had a lazy day for photography, been at work and took pics of matted dogs, but not decent pics! lol though I had one cute customer do some nice 'high five's for us.. And I did have a friend come visit with her rat bubs Perhaps tomorrow I'll get a decent pic rather than snap shots though!

my inspiration today was Paris' floppy curly mussed up 'bed head'

neat pics!! I have a very similar (new) camera too; canon powershot SX120IS, don't you just love playing with a new camera!!!

fluffypaws, I adore the blue eye! Rogan is a handsome boy! and anniek, I love that goofy crazy look!!! lol Me? Well I can't decide between these today...

omg these are all amazing photos!!! I love them all I can't pick only a few to comment on!!! haha I wasn't home yesterday so didn't post, but I did take one: and today was just a snap shot of my girl after we went swimming: bring on the rest of the month!!!

I always thought the OES were actually pretty easy to keep in decent condition. I have a client who comes in to see me for his bath & brush every week, and he takes me up to 2 hours, start to finish, including a full bath, blow dry, brush, and tidy up whatever needs tidying up (face, feet, and/or bum usually, occasionally shave out his groin and belly in the summer for easy cooling though too) and that's in spring when he's changing coat. 1.5 hours in the summer. Their coats are gorgeous to brush though, and done weekly it's not a big task (yes, 2 hours sounds like lots, but that's WITH a bath and dry, and without being brushed at all during the week) In saying that, I have spent 5+ hours on a single dog more than once, but that was with my old blow dryer, and with the old mentality that I had to at least partially groom them before their bath (omg, WHY did I think that!?) I have a couple of giant dogs in next week (leonburger and LH st bernard), we'll see how long they take!

you can use a flea treatment right after a bath, just not right before (or ya wash it off!) I have a few customers who bring their flea dose with them for me to put on after I've groomed their dog. lol! My girl is getting a bath & groom next week, she got a bath on xmas eve.

Definitely any good groomer should be happy to work WITH you and help get him groomed. I generally don't like customers staying to watch mainly cos the dogs are often worse of their owners are around! BUT in saying that, I do have a few people who stay while their dogs are groomed, for various reasons. And if people want to stay and watch i'll talk to them about it first about why I don't like it, and that while they are always welcome to stay if they want to, they must sit in the one seat, not talk to the dog, or make eye contact with it; so the dog doesn't think it's about to be rescued by the owners! I have nothing to hide, but I do like to be able to handle the dogs without them scrabbling around to get to their owners too!! I have had a couple of guys with bad backs that the owner showed me the best way to pick them up and hold them etc, and I'm happy with that and of course I'll do it their way!! Ring around the groomers, and chat to them; you'll get a feel for how compassionate they are over the phone, and can always go from there; I don't think it'd make a lot of difference if you got a vet nurse to do it than a compassionate groomer. And yes, there are some groomers who do home grooming in your own home, but not many that I know of.

huh, I've seen this on a *number* of dogs I groom, now I know what it is I can tell the owners! awesome guys!

yup, use a spray bottle, a little conditioner mixed into the water makes for a lovely soft coat too! And yes, the furminator is as good as the website shows, BUT you still have to be getting right down to the skin and on thick coated breeds you still need to be using something like a comb to get down to the undercoat! And overuse will break the coat to some degree (it's metal, and despite not being sharp, it's not 'smooth' either, and it will break coat from friction if nothing else) so don't go stripping one spot down toooo much!!! It really does pull the loose undercoat out wonderfully though, and it is worth the stupidly high cost.

shave it off. It's not fair to try and break up the mats if they're that bad! Shaving DOES affect the coat if done a lot on a naturally shedding breed, but being crossed with a poodle it may or may not be a coat that needs clipped a bit anyway, and if she can't maintain a long coat, then it needs to be clipped for the dogs sake; vanity for wanting the coat to look good when the dog is matted just isn't fair. If it only needs clipped off this once, then the coat will come back in fine. if it's continually clipped back short, it may or may not cause the coat to come back in thicker and woollier. It's hard to say really, cos being a cross it might not affect the coat like it does on other shedding breeds, but certainly shaving it once won't affect it noticably.

wow, I'm loving these pics!!! I couldn't really choose, so just went through my photobucket album and picked a few out... Paris running A friends boxer pup "nom nom" Baby rats A young rat oopps, that was 4... I won't do scenery pics then, cos I could choose a million of them! You guys were just talking about NZ scenery too. lol!

oooo, I look forward to starting this too!! I was out earlier today getting pics to start me off...

some more eyes.... a border collie I looked after a few years ago, I loved her eyes... a litter of lab X pups made cute pics too Paris is always a good model: as are customers!

ok, so I'm trying to figure out manual settings a bit more, so all these photos were taken today with the fully manual mode on my camera (not a DLSR though!) regardless of the quality of pics (ohhhh, ONE DAY I'll have me an SLR!) we had fun! hehehe.

ohh I hope they continue too, I don't have a DLSR at all, but I enjoy playing with my manual settings none-the-less, and having a challenge is great!

my first attempts at this photo challenge thing....