otto's first haircut

last week we took otto back to the breeder we got him from for his first haircut. this is him before.

the breeder is teaching me how to do it so eventually i can give otto a haircut myself. he will need his hair cut about four times a year.

all things considered otto was very well behaved and not too worried about the shaver.

 

there were a few times he acted up but the breeder had a firm hold of his beard, and was able to wait for him to relax before she continued with the haircut.

 

there are so many different stages to the haircut, a schnauzer gets a particular hair cut, short on the back, short around the head, and ears and tail, with long hair on the legs, under the body and long eyebrows and beard. 

its more complicated than that with all these 

little details to remember.

using thinning shears otto gets the hair on the top of his nose trimmed and in front of

 his eyes trimmed so he can see.

 

as schnauzers do hot shed hair, they kind of grow a wool that keeps growing. the hair in between the pads of his feet keeps growing, and it needs to be trimmed, every couple weeks.

after the ears are shaved then very very carefully you cut and trim around the edge of the ears. otto needs to be very still while doing this.

there was quite a bit of hair cut off.

 

although the hair on the legs stays long, the edges were trimmed to neaten it up

 

the last part was plucking the hair from otto's ear canal. because he has thick woolly hair his ear canal needs to be kept clear of hair. there was quite a bit to do, but now they are really tidy and i will just need to maintain them. it sounds mean plucking the dogs ear hair, but if you don't then they are very likely to get ear infections or ear mites. otto has already had an ear infection 

so hopefully this will help.

otto got a nice treat at the end and i think forgot all about the ear hair plucking. he looks so grown up now, 

like a big adult dog.

 

this is the after shot, with his shiny soft hair, and you can actually see his eyes.

before

after

 

borris misses the fluffy ears but i think he so handsome.

the breeder said she thinks we got the pick of the litter. who knew?! we were just looking for a family pet.