Kerry Blue Terrier Breed Magazine - Showsight

GROOMING THE KERRY BLUE TERRIER

Use a 15 on the underside of the tail. Scissor blend the edges

15 in “sanitary area” blending into legs

15 on upper inside thighs

3/4

Use a 7 from the upper thighs down the back of hind legs to hock

Figure 4. Ready for a Clip and Trim

Hock

towels to remove most of the water. Then put the dog in a crate and use a cage drier set on medium or low to dry the dog. This will keep the correct wave in the dog’s coat. Do not use a blaster to remove water from a Kerry’s coat! After the dog is dry, it should be brushed and combed before trimming. If you do not want to crate-dry the dog, damp-dry its coat using a hand dryer in the direction the coat grows, combing and brushing until the coat is dry. This will retain the wave, but in my opinion, crate-drying gives better results. Not all Kerries have a good coat; some may have naturally wooly or fuzzy coats that lack wave; some coats are thin, thick and straight, or too curly. Curly coats can be brushed when damp in the direction the coat grows to relax the curves. Puppy coats are usually thinner than adult coats, and may have looser waves. You can see what kind of coat the dog has after it has been bathed and dried. It is impossible to manufacture wave in a straight coat, make cottony or wooly coats silky, or harsh coats soft. TRIMMING THE COAT The numbers provided here refer to blade size. These numbers are a guide to which lengths you (or the clients) prefer, and may vary with the type of coat, the time of year, and the amount of work the client wants to do to maintain the coat in between trims. Note: I prefer to use different blade sizes rather than snap- on combs, and I use a specific set of blades on each dog that I groom. Before the bath, clip the belly and around the anus and genitals. Use a 10 or 15 to clip the underside of the tail and around the anus and genitals (Diag. 2). Clip (10 or 15) the hair around the vulva of a female, and the belly, including the hair around two-three pairs of nipples; clip the belly of a male, including his sheath (scissor the tip of the sheath), and continue with a narrow strip forwards of the sheath (Diag. 2). If he is intact, clip the hair around and on the scrotum with a 15. (Note: Please use a cool blade!) After the bath, clip (30 or 40) between the foot pads (Diag. 3); clip and grind the nails if necessary. Using the 15, clip a narrow strip between the hind legs down to approximately the level of the patella (“knee”), then continue with a 7 down to the hock. After the coat between the hind legs and the inside of the hocks has been scissored, there should be a straight line from the crotch down to the feet (Diag. 1). A correct clip on the head and neck will immediately identify the dog as a Kerry! Clip the top and underside of the ears (30 or 40), including the base of the ear around the opening. Then flush the ears with an ear cleaner. You can use a 7 blade on the top of the

Clip belly with a 10 or 15 blade

10 15

Use a 10 or 15 on sheath and scrotum on intact males

Use a 10 or 15 around nipples Both sexes

Clip nails if they are too long before grinding them

head, but I prefer to scissor it, as a clipper can produce a “billiard ball” effect. Use a 10 or a 15 on the sides of the skull to the corner of the eye, leaving coat from the rear corner of the eye to the corner of the mouth. The underside of the neck is clipped with a 15 from the base of the ear, arching down almost to the tip of the sternum (breastbone), with the sides of the neck clipped to form a

Clip hair between pads with a 40 blade

slight arch (Diag. 4 and 7). Looking at Diagram 4, you can see that the clipped area on the underside of the neck forms a V, which wid- ens from the sternum up to the bases of the ears. Clip the underside of the jaw, past the hair follicle and forward to the corner of the lip. Never remove the fall, the long hair from between the eyes! The fall extends from slightly behind the eyes, and should be thinned and shaped to lie flat from the top of the skull, between the eyes, and forward past the nose. Let the dog shake its head, and where the fall spreads out over the sides of the whiskers, point the shears towards the nose, trimming and thinning the fall to make a straight line on each side of the muzzle. When viewed from the top, the skull and foreface should be a rectangle that tapers slightly from the skull to the nose (Diag. 5). From the side, the head should appear flat from the occiput (rear of the skull) to the tip of the nose. For correct expression, the hair over the eyes should be tapered over the upper eyelid, shorter at the corner, and becoming gradually longer towards the center of the foreface where it blends in with the fall (Diag. 6). Clip the top of the neck from the occiput with a 3 3/4 blade, and gradually blend the coat into the back past the withers (top of the shoulders) with a 1-inch Geib blade. Then back-brush the coat

246 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, MARCH 2022