Thanks Bob
Sounds like your first attempt at grooming Milly went quite well. At least she still looked "reasonably cocker spaniel shaped and had no completely bald bits" Ruby doesn't look remotely cocker spaniel shaped at the moment and she has an almost bald area on the top inside of her back leg
It's a shame you live so far away.........I'm sure you'd make a much better job than this particular "skilled, professional" dog groomer Maybe next time she needs doing, I'll stick a stamp on her head and send her to you
Well, by "cocker shaped" I mean she ended up looking like a black tube with four legs, one at each corner, a tail at the rear end and a head at the front. Both ears were where they used to be and the only fairly thin bit of her coat was a 3 inch wide cooling strip from her lower chest down to her um, "Thingy"
. I keep her oxters well clipped as this is where her fur sometimes starts to mat and the area directly underneath her tail is taken a little shorter as well.
When clipping off her thick winter coat I start with a No. 5 skip tooth blade as it's more like sheep shearing than clipping, then a No. 7 FC for a smoother final cut. I use a No. 10 for her face, jowls, top of her ears and her cooling strip.
During the cold months I substitute a 5 FC blade for the 7 FC as it leaves a slightly thicker coat.
I trim her paws with a scissors then use the 7 FC blade on the front and sides of her legs, trimming and tidying up her feathering with a scissors.
If you do decide to have a go yourself I've a spare set of Andis clipper blade combs you're welcome to and a spare 7 FC blade as well just to get you started
. Use the combs with the standard No. 10 blade that comes with an Andis clipper and it allows you to vary the depth of cut.
Alternatively, I can shift the volvo out of the drive and that leaves a 25 ft x 9 ft area for parking up a caravan
.......Much better than trying to squeeze a cocker into a post box. The stamp would probably fall off anyway and I'd be stuck for the excess postage
.
Bob.