Terrier Transformation in Tucson

At Transformation Pet Center in Tucson, AZ, we love doing pet makeover grooming that lives up to our name. Here is the story of Belle, a Wire Haired Terrier.

Belle's family had recently moved to Tucson, and she had not been groomed since before the move. She was overgrown, dirty, and whew, did she ever smell bad! Did I say matted? That, too.



Here's a side shot that really shows the extent of the matting on the legs.


The owner admitted to a little home grooming on the head. Love these ears!



I was nearly salivating with the anticipation of "fixing" this dog's hair style and cleaning her up. Okay, I need a life, I admit it. Meanwhile, some lucky pet owners get to benefit from my pouring all my talent into grooming their "babies." These people found me by searching the Internet. I loved that part.

The first thing I did was to rake out the fuzzy body coat with a deshedding blade. Technically, this is called "carding the jacket". The purpose is to promote new growth of hard hair with good color. Carding is a technique used in hand stripping of terriers that I have incorporated into my pet grooming. It helps to maintain a healthier coat.

A key to carding is to gently stretch the skin as you are raking with the grain of coat growth. It looks like this:


This is how much hair I removed in this step:


Next came the bath. Make that two baths. The first bath of EZ Structure shampoo did not get rid of all of the odor. i determined that the coat was rather oily and was holding on to the odor. This dog smelled so bad I questioned my own cleanliness. For a second bath, I chose EZ Groom dEZolve, a degreaser that did the trick. Then I Used Show Season Results Rinse as a finishing rinse. Here she is after bath, dry and brushing out.



You can see traces of the previous grooming. The groomer placed the pattern too high on the shoulder and left something of a "skirt". We don't really want that.

Here is Belle with a new pattern, using a #5 blade:


After scissoring, she looked like this:



A happy Belle says, "My owners are delighted to have me looking like a Wire Fox Terrier again, thanks to Transformation Pet Center. I'm glad we moved to Tucson, so we could find Barbara and Dave."


Thanks for the endorsement, Belle, they can call us at 520-795-5743! You can also click HERE to go directly to the Transformation website and learn more about our grooming service.

ADDENDUM: Critique of previous grooming. It turns out that Belle's former groomer is a friend on one of our groomers' email groups. She would like a little more information about the previous grooming and what needed correcting. It is extremely difficult to critique a grooming that has grown out about eight weeks. From what I could tell, it was not a bad grooming. It looked to me as though the groomer had based her clipper work on one of our grooming books that has lines drawn to show the clipper line. I say that because weeks later I see what appears to be a line across the lower part of the body and shoulder. To my eye, this line is a bit too far up. If you look at the Wire Fox in the show ring, or any of the long legged terriers, there is no fringe underneath the dog, and certainly none on the sides. The lines in the grooming books, however, often appear to suggest that the clipping stops at a line along the side of the dog from the shoulder to the flank. Groomers often refer to the hair underneath that line as t!he "skirt". NEWSFLASH: There is NO SKIRT on the long legged terriers. There is just a little bit of length left underneath the body to accentuate the slope that naturally exists from the flank to the lower chest, but this does not extend up the sides. The clipper work on the shoulder extends just about to the elbow so as to show the shoulder muscle. I think of the terrier as wearing a T-shirt, they are "tough guys", working class dudes, with muscles showing.

It was even more difficult to critique the former grooming of the head, as the owner had done some "emergency" home grooming. But from what I could see, it looked as though the groomer had not taken the hair at the outside corner of the eyes flush to the head. My guess was that it had been left a little long there. Again, this applies to all terrier heads. The WFT head is particularly sharp and narrow, and when we leave it too full on the top at the eyes, the entire head becomes a bit bushy, instead of being a tight "brick" shape. (looking at it straight on).

Because of the interest in this article (and the actual expression of a groomer's desire to learn), I will get some additional pictures of detailing of the Wire Fox Terrier groom in the near future.