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

Hello to anyone who reads this blog. First of all my name  is Bailey. This is the first blog I have ever done so please go easy on me if I screw up.

This blog has been made for a project for my Bible class. It is what my teacher, Mr. Hazeu, likes to call the Passion Project. What the Passion Project entails is that my fellow classmates and I get to choose something we find interesting and would want to pursue. It does not have to be school related so it could be skiing, harmonica playing, fixing cars, etc. With the passion you choose you are to have a goal or an end project to show to the class. An example of an end project would be if the passion you chose was cooking the end project you would bring would be a cake or a lunch for the class. An example of a goal would be if you chose skiing your goal would be to go down the most challenging hill by yourself. The good thing about goals is that you don't have to necessarily reach them by the end of the year. You could get close and that would still be okay. How my teacher Mr. Hazeu keeps track of our progress in our chosen Passion Project is by the blog we create, which obviously for me is this blog. At least once every two weeks we are to put an update on this blog about what we do to try to complete our goals. So at the very least I will update this blog every two weeks.

Finally the passion I have chosen is dog grooming. My end goal is to, hopefully, be able to groom at least one type of dog by myself. The person who will help me complete this goal, or try to, is my Mom.  My Mom owns a dog grooming business where she works as the head groomer. She has done this for many years and has lots of knowledge that can help me complete my goals. Also helping is my Father who has learned how to groom from my Mom and helps her on the weekend.

So the next post I'm going to be doing is actually tomorrow, where I start volunteering for my Mom to learn. I will also try to get some pictures of my day grooming for tomorrow's post. Until then...bye.