# Show us your worst grooming job on your Poodle



## MiniPoo (Mar 6, 2014)

You should go first, you know.


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## zooeysmom (Jan 3, 2014)

I haven't done Maizie yet :aetsch:

But here is a horrible clip job I did on Zooey a few years ago:


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

I can go first because it wasn't my fault - remember when Timi as a puppy had to spend a night at the emergency Vet after she swallowed the gum with xylitol? Well they clipped off more hair than they left trying to find veins on her, so I had no choice...


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## MiniPoo (Mar 6, 2014)

Well, all my clips on Dakota are amateurish. I do better some times than others. In this first clip, I cut off too much of his TK.









In the second, I didn't know how choppy it was until I saw the picture. I had to take him back to the grooming room to smooth out his TK and legs. I was trying for bell bottoms at the time and was not entirely successful.









I had to remind myself to really brush his hair out straight before clipping. I don't think I did that when I first got him.


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## Dechi (Aug 22, 2015)

Minipoo I like your second job. Legs needed a bit more off but the rest looks nice.


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## Charmed (Aug 4, 2014)

Sorry, I refuse to document my failures. Some of them were not 100% my fault, like when I was trying to even up the half eaten ear or the chewed off leg. I have, however, looked back on some cuts and wondered what I was thinking??? I haven't even been able to force myself to take a picture of Pigpen Wilson before I re-beautify him.


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

The worst is when I think I did a good job and take a picture, and in the photo I see all the stickie outies, the bracelets are not even and one is round, and the other is barrel shaped, and the jacket is all wrong...basically I go from patting myself on the back, to having to start all over again lol!


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## poodlecrazy#1 (Jul 2, 2013)

Hmmmm, when Branna was a puppy she had a reaction to the rabies vaccine. She got a golf ball sized lump where the vaccine was given only the vet did it up high and on the wrong side. I shaved her to get a better look at what we were dealing with. It wasn't to bad just a super high CC cut and it grew out. The next time she got the vaccine I had to shave her bald!


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## Dechi (Aug 22, 2015)

poodlecrazy#1 said:


> Hmmmm, when Branna was a puppy she had a reaction to the rabies vaccine. She got a golf ball sized lump where the vaccine was given only the vet did it up high and on the wrong side. I shaved her to get a better look at what we were dealing with. It wasn't to bad just a super high CC cut and it grew out. The next time she got the vaccine I had to shave her bald!
> 
> View attachment 285865
> 
> ...


I had never seen a bald poodle before. It's quite different !


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

One of my earlier works of abstract art. I gave him high waters. lol. 



When I had decided to retire Matisse from showing, I cut off most of his hair, cut the bottoms of his ears off, but didn't thin them at all. I think his ears are too thick and out of proportion to his body here in this photo. It's all just too 80's. 




When Matisse was young, he was being groomed by a very good groomer for his showing career. I only trimmed him up a tad in between shows. So I don't have many pictures of starting out on him. Meanwhile I was practicing on Maurice.


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## dogs123 (Jun 14, 2012)

I haven't taken any pix of my bad clips. However, I do remember many years ago, I took my then miniature poodle in for a clip job...I had never had a pro clip job from this person before.
When I came to pick her up, they had shaved her entire head! Topknot and all...:0

That was the first time I saw that a poodle has a very flat head. Ummm never went back to her again...when she saw the look on my face, she said that since I was so shocked, she wouldn't charge me for the clip, just the bath....I was young and paid for the bath, and I was embarrassed to even take her outside....


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## spindledreams (Aug 7, 2012)

Poor Jazz and Apollo have both received bad groom jobs from me....


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

dogs123 said:


> I haven't taken any pix of my bad clips. However, I do remember many years ago, I took my then miniature poodle in for a clip job...I had never had a pro clip job from this person before.
> When I came to pick her up, they had shaved her entire head! Topknot and all...:0
> 
> That was the first time I saw that a poodle has a very flat head. Ummm never went back to her again...when she saw the look on my face, she said that since I was so shocked, she wouldn't charge me for the clip, just the bath....I was young and paid for the bath, and I was embarrassed to even take her outside....


OMG! That is just awful what that groomer did!!! How can anyone stay in business when they are so clueless? I would have been livid. Charging you for the bath or anything was also outrageous under those circumstances. 

Well stories like that and worse...where dogs are killed or injured or treated unkindly are the reason I do them myself with the exception of Matisse when he was showing. I did know of three groomers who groomed Poodles for shows...who showed their own Poodles and had fantastic reputations and to whom I was referred by my breeder and other people in the club. I might even use one of them once in a blue moon when I'm too lazy to do them myself or if I want them to look particularly good. But for the most part, I enjoy doing them myself.


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## glorybeecosta (Nov 11, 2014)

I had some about a year ago, worse than any I have seen here, I did not keep the photos, they looked like a rat terrier. First and only trip to that groomer


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## poodlecrazy#1 (Jul 2, 2013)

Dechi said:


> I had never seen a bald poodle before. It's quite different !



Ikr! We all thought the had transformed into a weird looking chihuahua. It was funny.


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

poodlecrazy#1 said:


> Ikr! We all thought the had transformed into a weird looking chihuahua. It was funny.



I still see a pretty poodle. Sometimes I am tempted to do it to my girls. Maybe I would keep the topknot and ear feather, but that's it. I hate grooming and they hate being groomed - it would be a win win lol!


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)




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## Viking Queen (Nov 12, 2014)

Ok, so here's the deal..... This spring, early summer, we had lots of rain and cold weather so I just let Iris grow all fluffy.....then the weather all of a sudden was 90+ degrees one day. She was miserable....groomer couldn't take her for a week so I put her on the picnic table to clip.

Well, she fell asleep, I put the wrong blade on the clippers, intended to put a 5f and had the 10 instead. Oops! I clipped a sleeping dog, rolled her over, clipped the other side. Waaaaaaay too short with lots of stickie outie places. I think she looked rather like a freshly shorn Alpaca with a poofy head and no hair anywhere else. Very very bald, but she was comfortable. People in stores about town would accuse me of starving Iris and suggest she needed to see her vet....she is really skinny under her hair.. Sigh.......I won't do this again, but it was a source of great amusement among friends.

Here is my Alpaca Poodle.


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## twyla (Apr 28, 2010)

This I refer as my doggy high and tight, or Poor Baby as I learned to groom on her


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## Raven's Mom (Mar 18, 2014)

I did the "high waters" thing to Raven when I first started learning. I am still struggling with getting her face just right. I want to see eyes enough for expression but don't want her to look scalped. Maybe some day I'll get the hang of the inverted V:afraid:


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## kayla_baxter (Jul 17, 2015)

Lila belongs to my parents now, but I found her on the side of the highway as an 8 week old puppy. We had always had labs, so my parents are used to simply wash and go dogs that are brushed just to help with shedding. Needless to say that in the beginning Lila frequently was matted and is try to brush her out as best I could. One day at around six months old the matting was awful, but only on her rear legs and butt area, so I did this mostly just to scare my parents into seeing why it's so important to brush daily. It was also my first time doing more that face and feet and Lila's first time as well, so it's just all around awful. 










Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Dechi (Aug 22, 2015)

I didn't do this, a groomer did. But I find it so ugly it could as well have been someone without experience...

Let's just say she'll never see me again...


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## murphys (Mar 1, 2012)

I have a picture somewhere. Fritz looked fine until he walked away from you. It's then that you saw I had unintentually given him a monkey butt. The hair grew back in a few weeks.


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## Ollybear (Oct 5, 2015)

*Worst groom job*

I haven't got a photo of my worst attempt on Olly because I haven't been brave enough to do more than in between trims and tidy ups but the last trip to a groomer has convinced me to have a go and keep going till I get the hang of it. The groomer did a very choppy job and way too short considering he had no matts ... And she did say she could leave it longer. I had to even it out here and there with scissors after and completely trim his face into some sort of shape. It was pretty ordinary. I didn't take a photo of before or after. But I think my avatar was taken a couple of weeks after. It wasn't the usual groomer and I'm not going back. Like I said it has given me the motivation I needed to get more serious about learning to do it myself.


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## zooeysmom (Jan 3, 2014)

murphys said:


> Fritz looked fine until he walked away from you. It's then that you saw I had unintentually given him a monkey butt. The hair grew back in a few weeks.


:laugh:


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## Michelle (Nov 16, 2009)

I cringe looking at all of Atticus's previous haircuts (which were all by me lol)...even more so now that I am a professional groomer. I hate looking at them.

I just want to reach through the screen and chop off the corners of his tk that are hanging by his eyes!! And fix the jacket on the modified conti...and of course fix all of the stickie outies.


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## Ollybear (Oct 5, 2015)

He's so cute, you can't really go wrong really. But it is nice to give them the 'do' that matches their character isn't it ... If you can


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