Flying Poodles

The pleasures of poodle grooming

Poodles have a reputation as “Barbie dogs” or “froofy dogs.” It’s undeserved; they’re really dogs that love to play and track and scent and do all those doggy things. But it is true that poodles also are among the few dogs that require a stylist.

Whenever two poodle owners meet, there are two questions: who’s the breeder? and who does your grooming? Discussion of the merits of different poodle cuts usually follow.

I was never a child who played with Barbies or got into doing my friends’ hair. When my daughter was young, I was not noted for my patience with knots or my desire to style her hair. My idea of fancy was a French braid. I got pretty good at them, actually. But I will confess to a certain relief when my daughter decided to cut her hair short.

And now I have two poodles. Having a poodle groomed is not cheap, and about six months ago I faced a choice: groom the poodles OR get a haircut for myself. I had to choose the poodles, because I couldn’t stand how shaggy they looked. At that point, I decided it was time I learned the essentials of grooming my curly girlies. I paid my groomer for two hours of instruction, and I started planning time on Friday mornings to do a little basic grooming–feet, face, rear, ears.

As I’ve gotten better, it’s gotten easier. I spent twelve weeks watching the absolutely dreadful TV show “Groomer has it” but I did learn a little from it, not least of which was that high school dropouts can groom a dog and do a good job. On one particularly memorable show, a dog psychic was brought in to talk to the dogs about how they felt about their groomer.

After that, I started imagining what Elly and Dancer say to the other poodles: “OH MY GOD! You would not believe how bad she is at this! This…” (and in my mind, they spin a circle for the other dogs to look) “this hack job… it took her two hours! But… at least she was gentle and I got a lot of treats.”

I have improved a lot, though. Yesterday I bathed the girls in the morning, then let them dry and brushed them. In the afternoon, it only took me about twenty minutes to do a nice basic cleanup on both dogs. It wasn’t a great job, but their noses look nice and cleanly shaved, their hair is soft and fluffy, and I can imagine them saying “ooh, I feel pretty today.”