Tuesday, March 22, 2011

A New Dog for the Price of a Haircut

Our newest dog, Leo, is a golden doodle. This means he's part poodle and part golden retriever. He's pretty much always had fluffy hair
and in our minds we've tilted him toward the golden retriever end of the scale, because that's what he seems like. Until now.



His hair is extremely prone to matting and requires faithful brushing. We are not faithful brushers. Nor even occasional brushers. By the time we decided he needed to be brushed it was too late. He was full of mats and there was only one solution: shaving him.

Now, in the kennel I have to be the one to break the bad news to people that their dog is beyond the de-matting stage and needs to be shaved. Many have already resigned themselves to the possibility, but some are simply unprepared. They drop off a fluffy, hairy, mat-beast, and pickup a smooth-shaved, skinny alien dog. Some people actually scream.

So it was with this in mind when I took Leo to the groomer.

"You know what he's going to look like, right" she said.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

I thought I was but it turns out it's impossible to fully prepare for how different he's going to look. (My wife actually laughed for five minutes.) He actually looked better than I thought he would but that doesn't mean I was prepared. She was able to leave a little on top of the head, and half the tail had some poof. The rest was shaved all the way down. Pinkness shows through. He's got a skinny little head now. He's smooth and soft and he looks pretty darned good, but just not at all like Leo. He looks more like...a poodle.


Now I have this poodle-looking dog who acts like Leo. He lays in the same spots, and begs for ice cubes when I open the freezer, and turns in circles the exact same way when we go to let him out. But he just looks like an imposter, like someone trained a strange dog to pretend he's Leo. I keep waiting for the real Leo to show up.

The hair will grow back, and we vow to keep him brushed, but the reality is we'll just have to keep him short. Big ol' fluffy golden-y Leo is gone and we have to get used to poodle Leo.






1 comment:

  1. Otter, our wheat colored Cairn Terrier, comes home shaved down with a 4 inch wide black stripe down the center of his back. A "reverse skunk". Looks ridiculous.

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