09/09/2026
While grooming this dog a memory popped in my head. It had to of been nearly 10 years ago when I was grooming a medium sized poodle that was just as matted if not worse. When pups are matted like this it is NOT comfortable at all for them to be shaved and they do tend to move much more than if it was a typical grooming. Unfortunately with that dog while trying to get under the matting its skin got in the teeth of the clipper and the poor thing had to get stitches. (Wasn’t a blood bath or anything actually it barely bled) I did not document that groom with pictures and I sure wish I had. The parents were very understanding as they KNEW how bad their pup was. However, that quickly changed after the vet “threw me under the bus” in a sense. He stated that “your dog couldn’t have been that matted as if that were true its skin would be irritated by the matting.” 🙄 yes, the skin would get irritated if the hair got wet as it would be extremely hard to get the dog thoroughly dried and stuff would start growing on the skin and cause a lot of irritation, but that irritation probably wouldn’t set in for an extended period of time. As you can see an extremely matted dog can have perfectly healthy skin. I’m disappointed in that vet and if I would’ve taken pictures, I most certainly would have blasted him with his ignorance. 
There really isn’t any point I’m trying to make with this post 😜. Other than groomers are not magic. Some dogs are extremely high maintenance with their coat and must get regular grooming and by regular grooming That means every 6 to 8 weeks not two or three times a year. Also, if there are any groomers reading this always document your heavily matted dogs you never know what could happen during the groom!
In my 15 ish years of grooming I have had 4 pups that unfortunately needed to see the vet due to an injury. Please help us groomers out on keeping our injuries low by being good pet owners to your high maintenance grooming dogs! 🐶
