Black Dog, White Dog

I am finding something that surprises me greatly.  I have difficulty seeing black dogs.  My depth perception and inability to see those 'standie outies' are frustrating me beyond measure!  I would have thought it would be much more difficult to see a white dog than a black one. Not so. At least not for me.  Yesterday I did a black poodle. It was a struggle. I forgot the before pic, but not the 'after' shot.

Apparently my camera has a similar issue. Or maybe I can't even see the black dog in a photo.  

I also did a WHITE dog with much better results lol. Here is her before. Her mom didnt want much taken off since its getting colder.

And here she is after:

Still so much learning to do. 

My First Poodle.

Today I got to do my first poodle from start to finish.  Here he is when he arrived:

As I've learned, the first rule of grooming: Do what the customer wants as long as it doesn't or won't cause the dog distress.  For this groom, because he is an outside dog, we did not poodle foot him. He also doesn't have a pom on his tail.  He was done with a 3 3/4 blade.  Here is what he looked like after his groom.

All in all, I felt pretty good about this groom. There were a few things I just couldn't figure out how to make look better, but he was pretty squirmy with that head.