Be still our hearts. It’s a Giant Schnauzer in a show groom.

Outside of a show ring, it’s unlikely that one would find a GS groomed this way, but it’s to be admired and appreciated when it is seen.  Giant Schnauzers are large, powerful dogs that are attention grabbing to begin with, but those Schnauzer eyebrows, whiskers and beard are trademarks of an iconic silhouette.

Giant Schnauzers are a double coated breed made up of a coarse top coat and a downy undercoat. In another post, we discussed hand stripping a coat, and the Giant is one of the breeds that benefits from hand stripping to maintain a proper coat texture. As we mentioned in the same post, clippering a Giant Schnauzer’s coat may be quicker and easier, but using clippers can cause the ‘body coat‘ to lose its coarseness. Individual hairs will grow thinner from the root, but thicker towards the tip, and cutting the hairs not only prevents the tapering and thickening of the hair that would provide the proper texture, but impacts the dog’s color.

Those iconic eyebrows are harder to get right than one might think. In fact, experienced groomers of Giant Schnauzers have told us that the biggest mistake they see novices or inexperienced groomers make when preparing a Giant for the show ring is the placement of the lines of the beard and eyebrows.

The brows are typically created by using thinning shears and accentuating the lines of a naturally inverted “V” formed by hair between the eyes, and in line with the nose. Some people “draw” with their eyes a line straight down from the outside corner of the dog’s eye towards the dog’s lower whisker mole. Then, regular scissors are held “flat” against the skull to prevent obvious marks left behind by the scissoring, and excess hair is trimmed so that each eyebrow comes to a point at the front of the eye. This stylized version allows the dog to see out.

Needless to say, we’ve glossed over the years of experience, as well as the “eye” it takes to groom a headpiece this stunning, but we wanted to offer a taste of what it involves, if only to make the rest of us think, “Wow” the next time we see a Giant Schnauzer so beautifully groomed. A more detailed article on show grooming a GS written by Joan Anselm can be read here.

Interestingly, we’ve heard it said by more than one groomer that the schnauzer groom is the foundation of almost every breed grooming style in the world. We wonder what our readers who are professional groomers think about this?

As for our image, we found it on Pinterest and would love to credit the dog, the owner, and the groomer. Anyone?