02125: Grooming Yoshi

One of the quirky side-effects of Yoshi's "new life" is the fact that he can't spend too much time with other dogs. His kidney problems has his system at less than ideal capacity and thus his doctors worry if he can handle the usual regimen of vaccinations thus yet. And as February has rolled in, it is pretty much official that Yoshi is fully off his vaccination cycle. And thus he is at somewhat greater risk to canine conditions moving forward.

And thus one of the more annoying changes in his lifestyle involves the fact that bringing him to a groomer is now a health risk for him given the exposure to multiple dogs. Thus our remaining options are to either find a home service dog groomer or learn to groom him ourselves.

In the interim, our vet has instructed us on the bare minimum grooming needed to ensure that Yoshi can function well, and this is mainly around his paws. With the rest of his lion cut style hair growing out quite majestically, my efforts to keep his paws neat and clean do result in him looking like he has chicken legs or something.

But the big ticket item is figuring out how to groom the rest of him and part of me is somewhat tempted to just get a shaver and take away most of his hair. I'll always say most since I've quite fallen in love with how Yoshi looks with a full head of hair. It really does suit him and helps him look even more haughty and picky. And let's face it, that's who our dog is.

I tried trimming some of the fringes of his mane today along with some of the hair on top of his head and the results were less than satisfying. I either need to take more formal lessons or just give up and focus on finding a groomer. I really don't want to massacre his hair, but I'm pretty sure I've already created some rather ragged bits. Sorry, Yoshi!