Finally some pics

Today was a long, hard day.  Another day where I question my ability to due this job full time.  Since the wreck my body just isn't capable of doing what it did before.  Today it reminded me of that fact.

On the bright side, I remembered to take some before and after pics of the entire TWO dogs I managed to get done today.

The first was a badly matted schnauzer. She was a sweet girl, but very head shy which made it very difficult. Had to do alot of scissor work because she flipped out with the clippers.  Here she is before:

And After:

Next came Gizmo, a severely matted Shitzu:

As you can see, I had to tunnel my way under this giant pelted mat.  As solid as they were though, I was able to do his body with a 5F blade.  His legs on the other hand, needed a 7F, and, in some places, even a 10.  He was a trooper for the most part.  That is until I got to his front legs. He thought he might want to try and bite me, so I had to muzzle him for the last part of his rough in. 

Once Giz had been bathed and dried, he'd settled down pretty well. I still had to fight to get those front legs done, most of which were done by scissoring, since he didn't mind that as much.  He wasn't quite finished in the 'After" picture, but mom took over to finish him off, and I wanted a picture of MY work.  But I was happy to find that there really was a dog under all that hair. And he was a much happier dog when he left the shop.

And last, but not least, I did manage to take an 'after' pic of  Molly, the Great Pyrenees that I did yesterday.  She was the sweetest thing ever.   

Monday I will start making calls to get the electrical work started on my garage/shop.  Finally taking the necessary steps toward getting my shop opened.  Sure hope my body hold up!

Fixing mistakes

Todays theme was fixing your mistakes. Poor dogs probably thought I'd lost my mind, but were so patient with me... mostly.

My first dog was a large cream colored Pekinese. They wanted her shaved down, so I started with a 5F blade.   The problem here was that he kept moving and I had lots of lines where his shifting caused the blade to move in  a direction NOT with the grain of the hair. On top of that, he had a ton of undercoat.  In the end I ended up backblading with a 4 and getting a beautiful finish, leaving only the tail with its fluffy beauty... until the owner came and requested I shave his tail too. The customer gets what the customer wants, and off came the tail... well the hair on it at least. Time to completion (including tail 2 hours 45 minutes) Yikes!

My second dog was just a bath and brush on a miniature yorkie.  Nothing to screw up there, thank goodness. Time to completion, 45 minutes

Lastly, I had a Lhasa that just wouldn't be still, insisted on standing with his back to me, and moving whatever body part I was working on as far from me as I could get. I wouldn't say I messed anything up, but had to go over him multiple times to get him smoothed out.  Then I began cutting on the head he kept trying to yank out of my hands. And cutting.... and cutting... and cutting...  Seemed to take forever to get all that hair under control and symetrical . Time to completion, 2 hours 15 minutes.

You'd think after all this time I would be speeding up. But it seems the faster I go, the longer it takes because I'm continually having to go back and fix things. I think I'm going to focus less on time, and more on efficiency, and hopefully with time the speed will just come. Thankfully, after having done the math, I realize that I can pay all my bills if I do 4 dogs/day.  I'm pushing for more though. One day.

Again, a day of no pictures. Just wanted to focus on getting the dogs done, and not worry about taking pics.  I'll try and remember tomorrow.

Back in the Saddle Again

Well, finally, after a hiatus of about 2 weeks, I was back to work.  Before taking a break, I was suffering from severe anxiety over 'messing up' every dog I touched. I'm not sure what caused the problem, but it was extremely debilitating.  Then along with it came a fear of being bitten.  Again, no reason for it.  It just WAS. For the last week before christmas I found myself unable to finish a dog for one reason or another, and let mom finish them for me. Some of it was time constraints, some were difficult dogs, some were silly things, like fear of cutting the eyebrows off a schnauzer. Go figure.

That horrible streak finally came to an end yesterday.  Although my dogs still took 2 hours each, and they weren't what I would call perfect by any means, they were done, they were clean, neat, and completed by me. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures because I was more focused on relaxing and getting the job done. But for the first time in about a month, I was relaxed and enjoying what I did.  I'm sure hoping to have broken that horrible streak of anxiety and lack of confidence!