Yorkshire Terriers are a breed of dog that need regular grooming, as do all dogs who have hair that grows like human hair. I used to take Aspen to the groomer when she was younger, but later started to groom her myself to save money.
I do a pretty good job, but it's never quite as clean as the groomer. Here's an example...morning hair needs combing in this picture:
If you look at Aspen's picture up at the top of this blog in the header, you will see what she looked like when first home from the groomer where she got her summer puppy cut. This picture was taken quite a few years ago, when she still had more of a rusty color to her hair...with age that faded a bit, but she still looked beautiful.
If you want to learn how to groom at home, there are tutorials at popular video sites like YouTube.
Related Posts and Pages:
Cleaning a Dogs Teeth
Clipping a Dogs Nails
How My Owner Groomed Me
Updated 2/27/17
I've been thinking about how nice it would be if my owner would get around to clipping the hair around my eyes, and my nails. She gave me a bath and trimmed most of my hair about a week ago. She gets a little nervous with the scissors around the eyes, so I'm trying to get her to look into the Yorkie grooming instructions provided by clicking here, especially since this is specifically about grooming Yorkies, right down to the littlest detail, and because the Yorkie in the picture at the site looks just like me!
And for some more grooming information, let me remind you about some of the posts we have already written on this blog:
- Cleaning a dog's teeth - this was an article we found that tells you how to clean your dogs teeth, and how important it is. We posted it back when I was having tooth problems.
- How my owner groomed me - this post is from almost a year ago, we share in simple terms how I was groomed, but not with the great detail you'll find in this yorkie grooming instructional resource.
- Clipping your dogs nails - here's another page that we did that you should find helpful, my nails are quite long now, and need trimming.
- Not grooming may cause ear infections - this is about ear infections, but has some information about how not grooming the ears properly can lead to infected ears in dogs.
Those are just a few things that we hope will help you, and now it's time for us to stop blogging so I can beg for treats and then my owner can try to start working on some quilting.
It's been a scarey couple of days for me, but not as scarey as going to the groomer...I used to love going for rides in the car until my owner started ending some of those trips at a groomer, now every time we go anywhere, I'm afraid that's where I'll end up. So my owner decided to groom me herself. She used to do this all the time, but she doesn't as much anymore. This is what she did:
- She put a large towel on the table, and got her best scissors, a small and large pair, and my brush.
- I had so much hair, that she just took hold of it between here fingers a bit at a time and cut off a few inches almost all over my body, leaving enough to shape later. I moved constantly, so it wasn't a very pretty site when she finished.
- She went outside, and put the hair on the ground not to far from the bird feeder, because sometimes the birds like my nice, soft hair to make their nests.
- Finally, she gave me a bath...that felt good because it was a hot day.
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That was all she did on day one. I noticed she kept looking at me funny, like she was an artist looking at a sculpture, planning what she was going to chisel away next. And chisel she did, the next day! Out came a clean towel and those scissors again.
- She was more careful in shaping my hair this time...it was more of a puppy cut, and you have to remember I have curly hair, so she would a section of hair between the length of two fingers up and down, pull it out from my body, and cut, and did the same thing pretty much all over my body.
- The tummy hairs she cut very short, very close to my body. By the time she was done, I looked so much better.
- Around my face is tricky, since that's my least favorite place to be cut, she holds me gently but firmly by the scruff of my neck, like my mommy would when I was a baby, and that just did something to make me still, and she could trim around my face. It looks much better now, I used to look like I had a long beard, now my hair circles my face kind of like a lion. She uses little blunt but sharp scissors around my eyes, and I can see again!
- She was real careful cutting the hair on my legs, once she did it so short I looked like I had chicken legs, and we both hate that look.
- She also trimmed the hair under my tail pretty short so.
- Oh, and my little feet, she trimmed the hair following the line of my paw so there was just enough hair to cover my nails.
That's enough for now, I feel much better, and next she's going to learn how to clean my ears. She's getting some help from a good instructional publication, it's VERY detailed, and costs so much less than a grooming. You can Click here for more information. We were impressed.
Happy weekend to you!
