[gemy]

Update: Today is our travel Day!!

Just back from the organic farmers market. Oh dear, I purchased sooo muchhhh food. Dave is going to freak when he sees what we are going to try to pack in our van!. I think we are going to need that roof rack thingie!. We are going to have a corn roast and a BBQ so there is just so much I did actually need to get. Then the homemade pies were so delish I bought 5...teehee.

Grooming the BRT: I decided to do something a bit different today for Magic. This is his final wash and blow dry prior to the finishing touches which will happen starting at about 8am tomorrow.
First shampoo: I am going to explore using one of my Razzle's shampoos; his special show day shampoo by Isle of Dogs called GLOSS. I mixed this 5 to 3 with his usual IOD no 33, and added a few drops of ISB minkoil. What I hope to acheive here is a sheen to his sun and water damaged coat. My last grooming / scissoring day, repaired a lot of that damage, but I want to see if I can enhance his rear and front leg fur. I will let sit in the coat for 7 minutes.

Second Shampoo: Will be IOD Coarse Coat mixed 7:1 with Royal Jelly IOD. Here what I will do is boost the texture of his coat to add back in any coarseness that I may have over corrected with shampoo no.1.
For the BRT breed there correct coat is a double one, with a soft undercoat and a medium coarse over coat.

Facial Furnishings the all Important Head. Here I am going to town and pulling out all the stops. Shampooing with Plush Puppy Conditioning shampoo, a superior in my opinion cleaner particularly for beards. Fully sudsed up it will sit in his hair for about 7 minutes.
Next IOD nutrient mask for his beard. This should help with his dry hair on face and will sit in for another 7 minutes and be only 3/4 washed out.

Blow drying will incorporate the Crown Royale bodifier, and for the facial hair alone an aloe and silk grooming spray.

Finally today I will do almost final thinning shear touch up to his head/beard to get the look I want for tomorrow. Then of course tomorrow I do the head /beard all over again.

Saturday am: The ring time is 10:20 am I will be up at 5am; feed/exercise the dogs; have a quick breakfast for me which will include some very strong coffee..lol. Then Magic goes into the tub for final head/beard wash. Zoey as well. Teeth are cleaned, paws are examined, any final nail clipping done.
Off to showsite. Zoey is first up on table to just tweak her grooming a bit as she is not showing, but you always want any dog you bring to a specialty to look good.
Magic will be up on table from about 8:30 am to 10 am when I bring him to ringside for his handler to show him.
For final show day grooming. The legs are water sprayed then blowdried as is the sides and back. Here you tweak the outline. Step back bring your scissors out and snip snip snip any stray hairs. Hopefully very minor corrections are done to angulations. Any final blending from topline to sides is done.

Finally you step back, take a good breath, and say okay we are done. Magic will be put down from table, and we will do some warm up walks, trots/runs, on our way to ringside, where in I say to Josie he is all yours and disappear from his sight...He does love to focus on his Mommy.

Now how many want to show dogs? Lol. Truly it is fun in a crazy kind of way.

I will try to take a before and a few after videos of the grooming process.

Let no one tell you that showing is just a bunch of nothing. There is a lot of very hard work, first in training and conditioning your dog, and then of course the show weekends.