Michelle Widrick (Both 6 & 7 are on this page)

Homework Assignment #6: Practice – Basic Body Clip

I am combining these two Homework Assignments as this is kind of a heartbreaking story/case

that I worked on. I volunteer at our local humane society and will give dogs baths, nail trims
and trims when needed. I received a call from the Humane Society Manager and they had just
gotten a couple dogs in from a high kill shelter in Tennessee. Very sweet dogs. One dog was a
Yorkie/Terrier Mix (as what they were told). She is absolutely adorable. Her name is Dixie.
Dixie was a little timid at first but according to the manager, she had a pretty rough life in
Tennessee. She was put on their site and within minutes had approximately 50 to 60 people
who wanted to adopt her. She called me to see if I could come and make her look pretty.
Well…….I was in for a surprise. When I got there, she went and got her and carried her out to
me. She handed her to me and my heart just broke. She was SEVERLY matted ALL OVER her
body. Back, Belly, Ears, Tail; just everywhere.

I put her in the tub just to keep her from moving around a lot. I tried very carefully with a
slicker brush to get her brushed out. That was not even an option. I did get very little brushed
without her whining and crying because I am very sure this dog was in pain. I talked with the
Manager and she agreed with me that I would have to clip this dog fully! There was no way
around it.

I started with a 7F Blade and did an all over body trim. That was even hard to do as the mats
were so close to her skin that I could tell it was just painful for her. I did a few passes with the
clippers and then would give her a break. I would have to hold up some of the mats with my
fingers just to not cut her skin. It was absolutely heartbreaking. After I used the 7F blade and
got a very good majority of the mats gone, I then switched to a 10 blade which evened
everything out. I could already tell after this that she was feeling soooooo much better. I was
able to do under her tail, her belly area and the sanitary trim.

Homework Assignment #7: Practice – Shears

I wanted to incorporate the Shears part of this to tell the whole story. After I was done clipping
her and was confident all the mats were gone, I then used straight shears to trim the areas
around her tail and around her ears. She did have some mats up on her ears that I also used
clippers on but then used the straight shears to trim around the ears and make them nice and
neat. I used the straight shears on her paws as well to trim them up and make them look nice.
I then trimmed her nails and she looked very pretty. I used thinning shears around her face to
tidy up the hair that was around her eyes.

After all this was done, I gave her a much-needed bath and blow dry. After she was completely
dry, I did some finishing trimming of any stray hairs that were not perfect.

Before this course, I would NEVER have attempted to groom a dog so badly taken care of. The
only challenge was one of heart, because I never wanted to hurt this poor sweet dog who had
already been through so much. Also, I have only ever groomed my own, big dogs, and never a
little dog. So that in itself was challenging.

The pictures are a before, during and after picture. The very last picture is of her getting
adopted 1 day after her grooming to a genuinely nice older lady and Dixie has been very happy
ever since. The new owner said that she would make sure that Dixie was never that matted or
not taken care of again.