Hello Readers. First of all I want to say sorry for not posting yesterday.

This is how my day as a beginner dog groomer began yesterday. We woke up at around 8:30 got to the shop around 9:10. From there my Mom had me answering any voice messages on her answering machine. She gets a lot of voice messages this time of the year. However this task was easy for me because I've already done this on days my Mom is packed with dogs, which was today.

She had nine dogs to do today. I assisted with grooming four of them. The first dog came in late. He was an Irish Terrier named Jack. At first I didn't do anything with him but once he was washed my father had me help dry him to teach me how to dry a dog.  At the groom shop we use a K9 Dryer for blow drying the dogs.  When drying dogs, I learned that you have to put the nozzle down on an angle and fairly close to the body to get all of the water off of the hair as well as off of the skin.   Once we were done drying I went back to watching again.

After that there were three dogs that were just there just to get there nails done.What I did learn about this is that a dog, about every 8 weeks or so, should get there nails clipped because according to my Mom when their nails are too long or are overgrown  it causes the dog to walk differently which causes joint point in the dog.

After that two dogs came in called Nicky and Brandy. Nicky is a German Shepard cross and Brandy is a Labrador and Golden  Retriever cross. Now while I didn't bath them or dry them or anything else my job was to hold onto Brandy while my father bathed Nicky and my Mom worked on a dog name Yoda who is a Shi-tzu cross. The reason I was holding on to Brandy was for her safety. While on a table like Brandy was on dogs are held there by a noose but they are still at risk of slipping or falling off the table.  So I just held Brandy there until my Father was finished drying Nicky. Nicky was put in a crate to be crate dried which is when you put the dog in a crate and you place a crate dryer in front of the crate to blow warm air in and continue to dry the dog.

While we were doing this two more dogs came in. Ben who is a Bichon-cross and Lola, which my Mom thinks is a Shi-tzu cross. Ben and Lola were put in crates because my Mom was still working on Yoda and my Father was just finishing Brandy. Once Brandy was finished he decided to work on Lola. While he was starting to  wash Lola he called me over to learn how to properly wash dogs. He told me that he liked to wash dogs from the head to the tail. He also told me that when you do the face you got to cover the ears because if water gets in there it could cause an ear infection. You also must cover the face because, as extreme as it sounds, if you don't it could cause drowning.

After my Mom had finished Yoda and began doing ear cleaning and nail clipping for Ben. (Just so you know once a dog was done the owner got phoned, they came and paid, and left with their dogs.) My Mom called me over to learn the beginnings of nail and ear cleaning. First she taught me how to clean Ben's ears. First she put a type of ear powder in his ears which makes the hair easier to grab and pluck out. She had me pluck the hair out and I got to tell you that it is a weird feeling plucking a dogs ear hair out. Then once you get all the ear hair out you put in the ear cleaning liquid that cleans out the earwax of the dog.

After that my Mom showed me how to clip the nails of the dog. Now most people would think that doing this was easy, but if you have a dog that flails a lot it is very hard. Now if you have a dog who is cooperative  like Ben was for me and my Mom than doing the nail clipping is easier.However doing it without making the dog bleed is a bit hard because if you cut too close to the quick you can make it bleed which causes  pain for the dog. Now what my mom said to do was when you're clipping the nail the quick in the nail (that is the tip of the skin in the nail) is an indicator of where you do not cut past. I saw it a few times but it is pretty hard to see, but I guess when you do 50 sets of nails per week it is easier to find it. My Mom was nice on me though and held were the nail clipper would clip and not hurt the dog and I merely did the squeezing of the clippers.

That's all the work I did on dogs yesterday. After that we had to vacuum and pickup mountains of hair.

You should note that f you plan to have this job you will always need to shower after...badly. So this is all I've done and learnt yesterday for my next post I plan on adding pictures, so for those who want pictures you shall get them

So until my next post... Bye