Poodle Asian style makeover

Okay, so here's my after bath product. She's very fuzzy in here, so I'm going to be taking a lot of this body hair off. But first, see how floppy her top knot is? Now, it's floppy even when it's short, because I've groomed her quite a few times, so therefore I think what would best suit her would be a pull-up versus something that's scissored. So even if you banded it, you can sit down baby, sit down, can you sit your bum, no? Even if it's banded, just to make it stand up better, so, she's getting old and wiggly, so we're going to see if we can do this easily. This is just to keep her from sucking on it in the moment, in the meantime, but I'll go over it in a bit more detail, because she's a bit of a wiggly bum at this age now. Okay, you can put your head down there for a minute. One minute. Come here. My goodness, oh my goodness, okay? And I'll probably redo this band, but the whole purpose is just to put the hair up, see it's corner of eye, corner of eye, and that way you can make it look like it's, oops, make it look like it's standing better. So this is where I kind of play, and I do things like this, where I go in and kind of, you know, see what it would look like with a short little face, maybe take the ears and make a round head. If I was to do a side part, I would part the hair and try and make it look short here, and I think we're going to play around and do a couple things if we can. So first I'm going to shave her body off, and then we'll pick up again. Okay, so here I've zipped her body off in a half inch, or sorry, I'm sorry, a three-eighths, which is a number two comb, because I want it to have some contrast, but she's pretty thin on her body now. I just want to quickly show you a rear leg. So let's place you up and over here so I can see you. So choices made for rear leg. Do you see how fat and heavy it looks in here? Now you're limited by your length down here. If you had tons of hair, then you can leave more up top, but when you're limited by only so much down here, so I can't take very much off this foot, especially if I wanted lots of dramatic flare and contrast, which I do. So that's my limit. Now you almost always don't need this back here, so I'm touching body here, touching body, and I'm going to follow almost like a schnauzer line, but I am lightening off down here. See how there's still hair there? You can leave hair here and bevel it in, scissor it in, create more flare. I'm trying to do this as fast as I possibly can. I'm also going to skim this blend line. I'm going to skim down here as well. I'm freehanding it. I'm basically following what my eye says, because if my eye says that's too heavy. So I'm not per se going to go in really tight here, but I'm going to go just below it. And take off some of that. You see how the hair kind of bumps out of my way? So I might switch from skimming. Oh, there's another tangle. I'm going to be buzzing her off afterwards, so I'm not caring if it's perfect or not. This is just to get you the idea. Now, see how we're almost having the look of like a column leg, but it still doesn't have flare, and that's because of more hair up here. So the tighter you take it up here, the bit more dramatic it'll be down at the bottom. So let's take it a little bit more. Now, even just that little bit helped. Then let's lower this line. Now, there's her hawk down there. And theoretically, if you really wanted to create this a bit more flare here, you could even, you know, scissor or thinning sheared in shorter than what you're guard combing or skimming it in. So, let's continue. Sorry, that was a toenail. Sorry, Sadie. Tangles. So this is a lot of hair, mind you. This isn't what you'd leave on everybody going out the door. But it does have the most flare. And if you're leaving a ton on the front, this will help balance that as well. My eye said that that's a bit too heavy still. And I would angle that back a section of the hair. So, approximately, that is how I would do a rear leg for flare. Because then when it's starting to peak out, it's right close to where this one's going to flare out. So it'll go together more. All right, we're going to pause it again and I'll do the other side. Let's talk tails. So it's taken me forever to grow out the base of her tail because she's always in a poodle trim and she'll go right back into a poodle trim. I prefer that when you're going to do something Asian, do something different. So growing in the base, there's not much you can do with these guys unless you really start growing it. So I tend to take it a couple... Basically, I'm setting it very similar to if I was going to do a poodle tail, but more of a standard poodle tail, more oval. So I'm holding the tail, combing it out to the side. Now you can use curves, you can use straights, you can use thinning shears or chunkers. But basically, I'm giving it a nice squirrely tail shape. And then once I've set my first shape there, I'm going to comb over and lightly layer anything that's hanging over. Now I'm combing it back that way. There's some tape, as you can see. Oh, no, no, baby. Oh, maybe that... All right, you can kind of see the shape. Now I find that down in the bottom is the part that's going to get yucky if they're not bathed very often. You know, they're not a weekly or whatever. So I'm going to take somewhere shorter. It's going to be down here versus up at the top. And I really like... I do have extra hair up here. I really like the look of it. My old standard poodle has a tail shape very similar to this. I think it's stinkin' adorable, even when it's kind of stinky looking. It's really cute. So it just makes a nice change to the normal poodle tail. All right. Now I'll show you a front leg. So all I've done so far is go down from the body and I've stopped at the shoulder here. So going touching to the body here, I'm going to start to taper off. And what you want to watch for is people tend to want to go in tighter at the bottom. Again, we have to let the bottom set our pace. Sorry, length. So if the bottom is not very long, like say, say my bottom was way, excuse me, way out here, I could leave it this long. Let's go back. Say, yes, say my bottom was way out here. I could leave it this long. But see how it goes out and then back in? It doesn't have a flared look. That's all the hair I have. That's like six months of growing hair on our feet. So I have to take it tighter up here. So you can, you can scissor this. If you're not good at scissoring, you can use a guard comb like I am, or you can take chunkers first and set your pattern. And you're basically, you're looking for that shape from the point triangle shape, right? Let's turn so you can see the shape. Sorry, sweetie. So you're looking for a shape. You see how we don't have, it's starting to come, but we don't have it yet. So you can set it with a guard comb. I'm touching here and then I'm skimming down. I'm touching, skimming down, touching, skimming down. You see it start to develop. It already has that. And look at how much more flared that looks than the other front leg. Yeah, they're both the same and it makes the bottom look fuller. So when you're setting your toes, one of the biggest mistakes I see is people either cutting too much from underneath. That's why I prefer for people to cut their feet when they're standing. So standing square, see how if she's crooked, it makes a difference. I'm using the super curved Utsumi shears. And when you're, when you're trimming the foot, don't have your angle like this. Try and have it as where the bottom cutting edge is closer to the toes. It'll give that natural bevel. So your first cut is going to be across. I only have right to her nails right here because we've been growing feet for so long from clean feet, little clean feet. So we're just going to edge that around. And then once you've set your shape, you can comb it and redo it and even pick it up and fix it as long as you don't, don't cut off too much hair. Good girl, sweetie. Oops, you can see her toes right there. That's what I'm doing. So now I'm just connecting the dots. I've set in the bottom of the foot. I've set in the top of the foot. And now I'm connecting the dots. So I'm showing you an angle. I can do this with shark fins because they have a swivel of them. This is the way I used to scissor feet before I became good at going down this way. So if you are starting out with scissoring and you're having trouble with getting lines, that is one of the things that I did for years. It is a habit still for me to do it actually. But to turn my shears with the grain of the coat. And I had a lot more success when I was nervous about a coat type. But eventually you got to practice going the other way too. So keep in mind I'm, I'm not making this perfect because I am going to have to clip her down short after that is the owner's request. So I'm just going to set the shape for you and then move on. Put your foot down, baby girl. Look at this. This isn't my good back leg. That's my other leg. So, messing with my head here. Will be the side and front. Move forward. In front of my leg. All right, pauses. All right, so now the face. So I've banded this to keep it up out of my way. You could also band more of this if you were not sure of what you wanted to do with it. Say it was long and you wanted to keep it long. You could band it out of your way. I purposely did not trim the throat yet because sometimes people have questions about it. So keep in mind whenever you're doing neck, behind the ears area. I know out of habit, we tend to do certain things. But for aging, you really want to look at what hair you need. So I've not trimmed anything in here. She has been growing all this out. You need a good brushing. For quite a few months, purposely did not trim inner ears. Most things you do for pet customers because we need it to help support whatever shape we want. Same thing with her throat. I did not trim any of this off because usually I take whatever I'm doing and do it reverse up the throat. And this is quite a mess. And that right away gives her a lot more shape. But I wanted you to see it. Now I'm doing it right to the throat latch right there. A lot of people will say skim right off. I like to leave a little bit in front of the chin area so I have something to create a circle with. I don't like the look of a completely shaved off chin. It really is preference. If you have anything where you're going to be incorporating this, just be aware that you don't get rid of it until you need it in case you need it. I don't need it, so I can take it up to that same line. And now I'm going to lift your face. So same thing how with a pet trim you might take clippers and clip in here. She's got very pink skin. She's getting old. This will be probably her last nasty trim. So I'm just going to use my scissors. Scissors or you could use blenders. And I'm just going to very carefully trim in there. And the goal is just to make it nice and short without being so clipped or so bare looking. Now I thought that I might do, no matter what style I'm doing, she's going to need a short chin, a short muzzle. So we're going to set her muzzle first and then we'll decide what to do with the rest of her from there. So one of the first things that usually you do is you set the chin on them. Then you can go from there. Make your shape. So that's cut across. Now I'm going to do work on the lip area. So I've got a finger underneath and a finger on top because I do not want a tongue coming out. She's got not very many teeth left. So she tends to stick her tongue out a fair bit. And I'm wanting to really clean all these up. Normally I would have kept them pretty short in between grooms. But I was leaving her nice and hairy for you guys. So see how crooked it is. I need to tweak it obviously because I'm coming at a funny angle. Now this is important. Always watch where your tips are because we actually don't want to cut. I'm not going to cut back past this line here where the corner of her eye is. I'm going to leave all that together. So always be aware of what you're cutting into. Also the width of your muzzle. I find people tend to leave it way too big out here and it's way too huge. So I'm going to make my first cut right there. And I might shorten it. So I'm going to try and keep in mind always from the bottom because I'm going to lift. We're going to get rid of this downward face. And yeah she's short. She's a tiny little thing under here. We're going to make a nice cute short face. Cut those cute little stragglies again. Come here baby girl. You're doing very good. You know I wish they'd keep her like this. She's stinkin' adorable. Stinkin' stinkin' stinkin' girl. Now you see how much... Oh this must be taller. Bear with me. Maybe this might have it better. Good girl. So see how much better it already looks but it still is too heavy down in here. You can kind of start to see it when you you know that this all this under here looks too heavy. And a lot of this is just roughing in so don't worry about making it perfect when you're first cutting because you know you don't want to mess yourself up. You don't want to it doesn't have to be perfect because you're going to probably change your mind like I do a couple times. See how she can't be? So we are going to shorten the size of this. I prefer oval over a little round circle so I'm going to try and keep this oval shape if I can. Now behind this muzzle can be neat and dried up especially right in front of her eyes. Good girl. I find this looks a little bit nicer than clipping and making like a donut or whatever. Blenders totally fine to use on poodles especially if you are not comfortable with just scissors. Your scissor skills aren't there yet. It helps and you know what most of the Asian style videos I've seen they're going all the way. Especially when you're doing all this little. You are so cute Rosie. Let's look a little deeper already. It's almost like a heart-shaped one so it looks a little bit cheeky to me. A little bit cheeky for how little she is. I might um when you're cutting behind like I am right now um I'll see if I can turn my scissors or head so I'm not cutting this way. I'm actually cutting a little bit of an angle just so that I'm cutting behind. I'm just trying to clean up this area. It helps make that muzzle really pop so and again you know you go in you set your shape and then you crisp it up. Um you know you make sure it's well blended etc etc and then you crisp it up so you're not worrying about making it perfect the first time around. So now I want to figure out what I'm going to do if I can't. Now the hard part matching her other side of her face. So if you use the same guidelines where we've we've set the chin. I'm going to clean up that mouth line a little bit. And then you are the same way that I held my scissors to match that side and hold them to match this side right. Even though I'm cutting backwards it works. Here babe. I have to check my line of where I'm cutting to. So I've got a little bit more room here that I can go right there is roughly where I'm where I'm going to. Going behind the hair good girl. Now can you see how wide it looks now it's too wide it's too big and that's that's really common especially when they have so much hair and it feels like you're cutting off so much but it's overwhelming her and it's taking away from the trim. So we're going to follow the old going to the edge of the eyes and she can't see up here anyway so we're going to take all that off. If you're cutting down from the top like I am make sure your angle is not like this. Make sure you're really changing your angle so that you still have that upward lift from the bottom that side's way longer than the other. Can you see it? So let's work on trying to fix this. Man I need a better set. This is really awkward. Awkward! I know I know stay there. Good girl. Pull this back. I'm sorry sweetie but I need that hair out of my way. And as always you're checking checking your size. Oh I'm still too big on that side. So it looks like it's the stuff mostly from behind here so I haven't probably taken this back stuff out yet. So that's what I'm going to do. See how it's a bit too wide? I'm hoping you guys were able to learn from all the little mistakes I make. Good girl sweetie. You are such a cutie. Oh my god can I keep you? I want to keep you. It's like a mini Vogue. Mini Vogue! Tidy this up a little bit. It feels too heavy. Good girl.