As a frequent victim of a couple of scissor-wielding, manic haircutters, I should have thought about a hundred times before I decided to bring one of our five dogs, a 9-month old puppy, for her first serious haircut. At the bare minimum, I should have known what kind of haircut I wanted for her. That way I could tell the...er...doggie barber my specifications for the cut. However, for me to know what haircut options I have for the puppy, I should have known what kind of dog she was in the first place.
"What kind of dog is she?" the doggie barber asked me. I stared back blankly as a chorus of yelps and barks from the other dogs in the shop overwhelmed my ears. Gee, I didn't know what kind of a dog Deting was. My aunt gave her to my sister and me back in June, a few week after my grandfather died hence the name copying. I knew she was white and had thick, fluffy hair which covered her eyes so we kept the furry mess on her forehead in a cute ponytail held in place by a pink rubber band. That left me with a couple of options but I was not confident enough to offer an intelligent guess, "I don't know," I finally relented, shrugging my shoulders.
The barber pulled up my now-shivering puppy's face and gave his verdict. "She looks a lot like a poodle to me," he said. Here we go again, a poodle. My sister and I had long been locked in an endless debate as to whether or not Deting was a poodle. She was a mutt so it was quite difficult to pinpoint her exact lineage but I was not ready to concede that we finally had a poodle in the house. I was not exactly a big fan of poodles. They often struck me as high-class, fancy, snooty dogs fit for royalty. My dogs were all rambunctious, mischievious, naughty, rough, stubborn, reckless types who liked to run around the yard, make sky-high leaps for the clothesline, wade in mud and be everybody's absolutely adorable headache. Deting is particularly that kind of dog. She runs into my room and jumps into bed if she can't wait for me to wake up. She loves to play fetch with her spiked fuchsia rubber ball and rubs the thing on my leg when she's in the mood for the game. When I'm getting ready to leave, she pulls at my shoelaces, takes nips at my socks, bites my sneakers and pulls my pant leg as if she could stop me from going anywhere. She has to send me off at the elevator every time I have to go out (or else she goes into a riotous flurry of barks and screams) and will sit as sentry in the front door at around dinner time, waiting for me to walk in. At nine months she has been trained to relieve herself outside of the house but when she does not want me to leave, she does the job in the floor just so I would be forced to stay a bit longer to clean up her mess. So based on her very behavior, there was no way my white little furball was a poodle.
"What cut do you want for her?" the barber asked. Kind of cut? Was there even such a thing in the doggie world? I looked at the barber. Exactly how good was this guy in chopping off my little canine's hair? The guy had cropped his hair so close to his scalp I wasn't exactly in the best position to judge his cutting skills or his taste for hair fashion. "What cut do you suggest?" I asked him. He motioned for me to follow him and pointed to a fat, cropped shih tzu sitting on the grooming table. "This one," he said. "A summer cut." The hair was cut really close to the skin and I was not quite sure if Deting would look good with fur that short. Oh well, this guy seemed to know what he was talking about. I thrust the puppy and her now booming heart into his hands and the dog started clawing for me silently. Uh-oh. Was this a sign that Deting herself felt that this was a really bad idea?
The barber told me to come back after an hour so I pretended to be husband/father waiting for his wife/daughter to finish her salon duties. I went across the street to SM Hypermart to buy some stuff, check out the second-hand bookstore there and to read up for the devotional I was going to give the next day in my small group. After about an hour, I walked back to the shop to claim my dog so I could go home and get some sleep.
The barber was now starting to give two more dogs a trim when I walked in. "Hi," I said. "Can I get my dog now?" He looked at me for a moment and said, "Oh yes, you're getting the poodle." Oh boy, poodle again. I wish I could roll my eyes and tell him to stop calling my dog that. There was no way in the canine world that I was ever going to own a poodle, buy a poodle or even have my dog look like a poodle. Poodles were, like I said, high-class, fancy, aristocratic...LEAPING LIZARDS OF MARS, MY DOG IS A POODLE! There in the hands of the barber was a white, furry dog which closely cropped hair, a fancy tail, a shaved snout and a rounded forehead typical of those show poodles with Swarovski crystals for collars. She looked absolutely ridiculous.
I eyed the quivering puppy in his hands. "That's not my dog," I squeaked. "Yes she is," he said while handing her to me. My head started to race with all the possibilities of bringing home the wrong dog. I mean, if they can exchange infants in a hospital nursery by mistake, how much more dogs in a grooming salon? This trembling little thing in no way resembled the dog I had brought in about an hour ago for a cut. If this was indeed my dog, what she had was a complete makeover. Before I could even decide on the thing's identity, the barber placed her in my arms. I took another hard look at the now happier looking dog. She started licking my face (her usual greeting) and when I looked past the shaved snout, I found the familiar round, dark eyes and I knew this was indeed my dog - just looking a little bit more posh and flamboyant in a subdued Adam Lambert kind of way.
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| Back in December, hours before her first trim. |
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| After a very conservative cut, Deting looks quite presentable. |
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| Her present authentic French poodle look |
Deting wouldn't sit in the front seat on our way home. Instead she clambered into my lap and fell asleep as I drove. This was another trait of hers which came up especially when she has anxiety attacks from what she perceives to be prolonged separation from her humans. When we got out of the elevator, she ran like mad out into the hallway and headed for our front door like she usually does. Only this time, she was not bouncing around like the little furball that she was. The cut made her look like she was prancing and flitting around like a half-dignified little princess out on her first walk. It was even more hilarious when she was running after her ball and she forgot to brake that she half-smashed into one leg of the dinner table. True, the cut highlighted her lean, light frame and made her look squeaky clean.
I admit, however, I miss her disheveled hair and how she looks much like the abominable snowman, especially after she has not had a brush after about a day. There is something about my little wildchild of a dog that makes her a lot more adorable. Oh well, as for now, I'll have to wait until her hair grows back.
If it ever grows back. Yikes.
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| Don't you worry, baby. I'm still gonna love you, even when you look funny. |
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