You might not know every person in the collage that appears below, but we bet you can guess the decade in which they lived:
It’s possible that few things make us cringe more than the way we wore our hair “back in the day.” In defense of the people in the collage above, their respective hair styles were “happening” for their time – and yes, even the mullet. But lest Gen Z (aka Zoomer) readers laugh, you don’t get off easy, either. Behold the “Zoomer Perm,” sometimes called the “broccoli cut” or “bird’s nest” for obvious reasons:
From WikiHow under a Creative Commons license.
The hairstyle seen above has been seen on mostly curly or wavy headed Zoomers, and it just might be the hairstyle that makes them wince one day, but our purpose here isn’t to make fun of how we all wore our hair at one time, but to share that it happens in dog grooming, too, particularly in a show ring.
Before Frank Sabella, came along, how a Bichon Frise was groomed was quite different than how Sabella groomed one. In the late 60s, he set the stage for a more sculpted style emphasizing balance and proportion, attributes important to how he interpreted the breed standard.
But here we turn to a breed we know better, and this whole post was inspired by a photo we stumbled upon:
Puli photo from pxhere was released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. Name of dog unknown
Short of what looks like a red flower petal in the coat, this dog strikes us as a clean and yes, trimmed Puli. Were the dog not trimmed, he or she would be dragging cords hanging from the ribs to the loin area. Working Pulik in Hungary were most likely shorn with the sheep, or they chewed off irritating cords, but for anyone who doesn’t know, coat continues to grow in the breed.
Grooming a Puli has changed quite a bit over the years. Back in the day (or at least, in our early days in the breed) one end of the dog was much like the other. Fanciers had their own way of trimming, but as far as we can tell, “layering” didn’t become a thing until the late Mary Wakeman’s “Ciggy” entered the scene.
Lacking permission to show a photo of anyone else’s dog, we’ll show two of ours, and as you can see, there is quite a difference in how the dogs in the two photos were trimmed.
A good groomer can hide a multitude of faults, but a good judge will find them, anyway. Nevertheless, at first glance, a layered coat in this breed is infinitely more pleasing to the eye. There is shape! The head is clearly a head, and relieved of extra weight, shortened tail cords make it infinitely easier for a happy Puli to launch his tail over his back.
How has grooming changed over the years in your coated breed?
Top image:Photo of Poodle from 1915 is in the public domain