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.