• Cleaning the ears and plucking
Cleaning the ears is a normal feature of dog grooming. You will learn to clean ears with the appropriate ear cleaner and cotton swabs.
You will also learn to inspect ears during the pre-grooming consultation. This starts with a visual check – and a sniff. The ear should look clean, pink and healthy. It should also be odourless. If there is a build-up of a brown wax-like substance and an off-putting odour, this could be ear mites or infection. It’s important to identify this to the owner and ask if the dog is receiving veterinary treatment.
A lot of breeds will require hair inside the ear to be removed. If too much hair is growing inside the ear, it can interfere with the ear’s ability to keep itself clean,
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But there is no cause for alarm. I often compare it to nicking myself shaving. In the same way that I don’t rush off to the Hospital Emergency Ward, the dog won’t need to see the vet. The only exception to this is if the dog is haemophiliac and the nail continues to bleed. In which case a vet must be seen.
• Feet: trimming between the pads, paw care and styles
You wouldn’t expect much difference between dogs when it comes to their feet. But think of the classic Poodle cut. The foot is shaved to the ankles. Most other dogs, however, keep some length at the foot, and it’s usually cut tidy then rounded nicely. But don’t under-estimate the trickery involved in creating a nice rounded foot. Or the chaos that might occur trying to shave a poodle’s foot. Your instructor will demonstrate all this to you.
Additionally, you’ll learn to manoeuvre a small pair of scissors to cut away all the long hair growing over top of the nails or between the pads. Accidentally nicking the pad of a dog’s paw is not an uncommon accident among novice and experienced groomers alike. Dogs don’t like their feet being handled – whether it’s to clip their nails or trim between the pads. They fidget and pull away. So it’s easy for an accident to