Three big curly ones today. Three dogs, all of them fluffy, all of them on the table in one stretch — about six hours of grooming back to back, seven by the time the driving and the setting up and the packing away were counted in.
Worth saying up front: all three went home with genuinely good haircuts, and none of them was seriously matted, knotted or tangled. Some days that is the whole victory and I will take it.
Bear: the toothy smile
Bear is a light cream doodle with a soft curly coat and a face that is doing its very best to be taken seriously at all times. It is not working. He has a toothy grin that he has clearly discovered gets a reaction, and he now deploys it constantly, which is a very smart career move for a dog.
He was first up, which meant he got the full cross-body lasso and the toe beans treatment before he had fully woken up. He ate his snacks, he tolerated the feet, he was called a silly baby more than once, and he offered up an excellent pretty face for his picture at the end.
The nicest part of Bear’s appointment: I pre-brushed him before the bath, and it paid off. His coat had no knots anywhere it mattered. That is the entire difference between a comfortable groom and a long one. Ten minutes of brushing at home before your dog’s appointment does more work than people realise, and his family clearly does it.
Hattie: Little Miss Hattie
Hattie is a silver and charcoal curly girl with a much lighter muzzle, and she arrived on a mission. That mission was to chew her own toes. I asked her about it. She did not offer an explanation. We agreed she would knock it off, and then she chewed them again, so the agreement was not binding.
She is a sweetheart and she was also, by the end, completely done with the entire concept of being groomed. She got wiggly. She got opinionated. She decided that she had finished and that I had not been consulted. I have a lot of sympathy for that — by the time a curly coat has been bathed, conditioned, dried and trimmed, the dog has genuinely done a long day’s work.
Her ears are the story here. They grow out into a scruffy little explosion, and they look a bit wild when they are cut short, so the long game is to get them shaped straight across as they grow. Last time they had to come off, because the coat behind and around them had packed into mats. That is what happens when ear hair is left too long — it is one of the first places a curly coat fails, along with armpits and chest.
She did get the bows and the little nose-and-ears set at the end, and she wore them with the dignity of a dog who had earned them.
Tuck: a very fluffy boy
Tuck is cream and apricot and, and I want to be fair to him here, extremely fluffy. So fluffy that halfway through I had to stop and get a different blade length, because the one I had planned on was simply not going to manage it.
His nails were long and he is not shy about letting you know he would rather be somewhere else. He is resistant. He is also very good at it. We did the turn-turn-turn, we did the feet, and then he made it clear that the rest of the appointment would be a negotiation.
Small confession: I cut my own finger today, mid-nail. It happens from time to time. Grooming involves sharp things and dogs who move, and sometimes the groomer is the one who gets it.
One more thing about Tuck, and this is the useful bit. When I was working over him I found what looked at first like a bald patch, and it turned out to be a small bump on the skin. That is exactly why I run my hands over the whole dog at every appointment rather than only the parts I am clipping. Clients see their dog every day and stop seeing the small changes; a groomer who handles them once a month, or once every six weeks, is a second set of hands. If your groomer ever mentions a lump or a bump, it is worth having your vet take a look — not because it is necessarily anything, but because somebody noticed.
What three curly dogs in one day teaches you
All three of these dogs have hair rather than fur, which means it keeps growing in a long cycle and needs cutting on a schedule instead of shedding out on its own. Two of them had a little trouble in the places curly coats always fail first: the armpits, the chest, and behind the ears. Those are the spots where the hair rubs against itself every time the dog walks, and friction is what turns loose hair into a knot.
So the home routine is not complicated. Brush behind the ears, under the front legs, and across the chest once a week with a comb that reaches the skin, and you will spend a lot less time in my chair. Skip those three spots and the coat can look perfect from across the room while quietly felting underneath.
Three big curly ones, six hours, no disasters, three good haircuts. A good Friday.
Until next time, my furry friends!
Catch the Action Live! Want to see these grooming transformations happen in real time? Tune into the solo live stream over on Twitch at DogGroomerNicole. Whether we are tackling tricky coat conditions, working with different breeds and weight classes, or just enjoying some puppy cuddles, you can watch it all unfold straight from the van.
While you are watching from your laptop or desktop, please take a moment to click the link below the stream to learn more about Folds of Honor, a phenomenal charity we are incredibly proud to support.
See you all on the road!
About the Author
Nicole is the owner and certified groomer behind Vroom Grooms LLC, a mobile dog grooming service serving Northwest Ohio. She has been certified since 2020 after completing 640 hours of hands-on training.
This post was drafted with help from Nagini 🐍, her digital assistant, who keeps the blog running, handles the tech side of the website, and makes sure Nicole spends more time with dogs and less time wrestling with WordPress.