This is a page for grooming. I would like to thank my very dear friend Pam Stephenson of Harmony Aussies for Zane (the test Subject)
and for taking all these pictures...for without her, none of you would be able to see them.

Tristan groomed for a show. In my experience, and for this dog, he looks best when groomed this way. Hocks are nice and even, pasturn hairs are flagged and feathered out, and I trim very little on his ears. Below, some people trim the pasturn hairs on their dogs. I always look at the front on the specific dog and decide which looks best on that individual. For instance, following Tristan is a picture of Gabby, who's pasturn hairs I do trim flush. She doesn't carry a lot of leg feathers at this point, and it looks more balanced when trimmed.

The red line is showing where the pasturns would be trimmed if they were done flush.

Here on Gabby you can see that the feet are very well trimmed, under hairs are trimmed from her belly, topline is blown out as
straight as I can get it and her hockhairs blend well into her pants.

Notations will be added later. As it goes right now...it starts with an ungroomed dogs, goes to feet, hocks, butt hairs, ears and then the neck. There are some of him being blown out. Very last is ear glueing.  There are TONS of photos..so please be patient while they load.

Update: We have some new ones to add! Lots of people have been asking about legs, leg hair and how to prepare them for the show ring. My friend Debbie Henderson brought over her gorgeous Black Bi Boy, Yankee, and took some pictures! Yankee went through the same grooming process as Zane does down below.

Trimmed feet, legs are ready to wet off.

At this point, I will spritz them with water, and then will put the product on there. I use about a quarter size amount, slather it in my hands and then apply it to the legs evenly by rubbing up and down and making sure all of the foot and leg have some on there.

More rubbing.

Once the legs are dry (I dry them against the grain), I will take my slicker and brush them against the grain.
After that, I will spritz it with a little hairspray and brush against the grain again.

This is a little hard to tell what I am doing here...but I had spritzed Yankee's topline with some water and brushed it back towards his tail. I wanted to get it as straight as I could, since he has some curls that like to stand straight up. Once I brushed it back, I blew it dry with most of the air pointed on ME and about 10% on the top of the line of hair.

Here is the finished product.

Before.  On the toenails, I do not like to see them standing out from the hair on the finished foot, so I trim them in line with the hair and short enough that you cannot see them when the foot is finished.

After

Trim around each pad with your straight scissors.  Also trim out the hair on the inside and make them clean.

Trim a straight line up the side of the paw to finish off the foot

Take your thinning shears and make a nice angle towards the feathers.  If the dog looks best with trimmed pasturns, this is when you would trim them. (see notations above). A rule of thumb for me is when they have tons of leg feathers, they do not look best with stripped pasturns.

Brush the hair straight up on top of the foot and take your thinning shears and trim it off....not totally...but close.

Cleaned out pad (sorry for the bad light)

Moving to hock hairs...brush it out and pick a nice line to start with. You'll use your thinning shears to create a cylinder.

Finished hock.

Hold tail hair down and create a nice tail area. Stick within the beige area, not the colored area. Also, don't cut so short the butt hole shows when they move. Dogs with higher tail carriage leave the top hair longer to go over.

Finished tail. We are letting some on the sides grow out. It was cut too wide.

Timming up excessively long undercoat hairs.

Trim the inside area of the ear out...with your straight edge scissors

using your fingers as a guide, trim the outter edges of the ear.

Brush the upside of the ear hair up as you are going to use your thinning shears to shape it.

I brush the ear hair up and then trim some of it off..not a lot...I want it to look fairly natural.

Trimming up excess long hair under ear.

Finished ear. No, my finger is not in his eye. :O)

using a stripping tool, pulling hair up and stripping off undercoat to create a smoother neck.

Periodically brush the neck out to make sure it looks how you want it to.

Finished neck

more trimming on neck (other side)

Blowing out coat. I used Bodifier first, then a nice layer of Coat Handler. Brushed out the coat and am blowing it in the direction I want it to lay down. All the way around.

Finished Grooming

He wouldn't stand still on this side for me to brush him out nicely.

EAR GLUEING:

using one hand to hold the ear, place the ring finger in the bend of the ear, fold the flap over the ring finger and glue to the outter corner of the eye.

Folding (glue would have already been on)

The outter tip is under my pointer finger and the other finger...squished up against the outter corner of the eye.

You can see my finger still inside the ear, that creates an air passage preventing infections.