How's it going, everybody? Welcome to episode 57 of the Tack Box Podcast. And it is if you're looking on YouTube, uh, you know, you get to see our three smiling faces. If you if you're not, uh, we have Scott Tony back for the third episode. He's becoming a regular on this on this podcast, Dales. Uh, we got Scott. We're gonna talk about uh show day prep for your Japanese chin. Probably uh would fit into other breeds as well. But specifically, we're gonna talk about it with the Japanese chin and how he grooms and prepares his uh group winning chin on the day of a show. But before we dive into that, we'll go over as normal, we'll check in with Dale and then we'll check in with Scott. How are you doing today, Dale?
SPEAKER_00Good, good. It's rainy and wet in Texoma land.
SPEAKER_01Hey, you know what? That's that sounds pretty positive to me. We have had no rain up here in South Dakota. We're burning up. It's just like zero snow this winter, zero moisture. It's like everything's brown and on fire. It's it's you know, it's very unique this year. So at least you're getting some rain down there. What's that? You're just one match away. Hey. You know, that's how it rolls. So uh Scott, how are you doing over there? You're in uh North Carolina. The weather looks bright and sunny there today. How's everything going? Tyson, the Titan of Talk showed. I'm well, how are you doing? A new nickname. I'm doing great, you know.
SPEAKER_02That's that's what the tea on the hat is for. So it's beautiful here, 60 degrees, no humidity, but we're just inundated with pollen and and we're due for some rain, which I I don't normally wish for rain, but we we need it. But beautiful day here.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. You know, uh so a couple weeks ago, Dale had this nasty head cold. I got the nasty head cold this week, and it was it was super weird because I was like, usually my little rug rats bring it home from school and then they inundate the house with the diseases and all that, and it's just like, oh, it's coming, you know, and you're just waiting for it. And this time somehow I got it first. And hopefully yes, at this point, as a parent, I'm just praying that my kids get sick, you know. It's like, you little bastards, this is what this is what you usually do to me. You know, you usually bring the sickness home to me. I got sick first this time. Like, you know, I'm like purposely coughing as I walk by them. You know, no, I'm not that bad of a parent. But you know, those are the things that sometimes cross your mind because you want payback on the kids when they when they do that to you. So all right. Now that's my story for the day. And you know, and now we probably got some thumbs down and people pissed off because I said I called my kids little bastards, but you know what, it happens. So all right. Let's uh let's get into the podcast because I think we're gonna be able to take a full hour on this. You know, we don't really have time limits on it, but we like to be around an hour. But when I'm just looking through our notes and our preparations for the show, we have a lot of cool stuff to talk about on this show. So I kind of want to start at the beginning and something that we've talked about in a previous podcast. I think going back to like podcast number two, maybe number three, something like that. We talked about we had an episode where we talked about things that we would keep in our tack box. And one of those things Dale had, you know, like a pain reliever type of thing in his tack box because he said when chin travel, a lot of times they can get sore from being in a kennel for so long and have joint and muscle stiffness. That happens to be the first thing on the list that I want to talk about today. So, Scott, we're gonna start with you and then and then we'll go to Dale again, like we normally do, if Dale has anything to add to the questions here. But when when traveling with a chin, it must be, I've heard this multiple times now, so it must be pretty common that being in a little crate, you know, they can tend to get muscle stiffness, joint stiffness, anything like that for being in a crate too long. So, how do you handle that in preparing a chin for the show ring?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so one of the things I always carry with me to shows is the liquid medicam. And it's an anti-inflammatory, super easy to dose. There's a little syringe, you draw up the number of pounds that the dog is, and it's palatable to screw it right in their mouth. So I find that this reminds me, you know, I took a trip once with somebody that's no longer in chin. This guy was a terrible driver, and he took corners like he was on greased wheel. And not only does that sort of tussle the chin around on their crates, but once or twice I think a crate or two might have actually flipped over to its side. So, first of all, be careful driving. But, you know, remember they're back there. They don't know when you're taking the curve and when to sort of brace themselves. So I take the medicam and I do this with my special. Every day you're doing a lot of grooming, you're traveling with the dog, you're stacking them, you're making them do things that are sort of out of their normal routine. And just like us, I mean, we've all been runners, athletes, workout, icon do, whatever it is, and you can get sore and you can get stiff. So every night I will dose my special with maybe not quite a full dose, like let's say he weighs seven or eight pounds. I'll give him the five or six pound dose of the medicam, just sort of proactively give him a little something if there's a little bit of inflammation or soreness, and I find that the next day he's ready to hit the ground running again.
SPEAKER_01So you kind of do that for every show just as a preventative measure, just to be proactive to make sure that because I mean they're sleeping in different spots. I mean, I just imagine myself as I get older, is like sleeping in a hotel room. It's like, man, I might need some of that for myself to wake up in the morning.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And and if you're seriously showing a dog and showing them frequently, I mean, Susan and I do this with Eddie anyway, but we have regular chiropractic visits for him. There's nothing really off with him, but it keeps him from getting off. And the chiropractor's great. She'll she comes to the clinic and she'll say, Hey, you know, his reach on this side is a little bit feels a bit more restricted, or he's a little tight in this lumbar region. And boy, she gets it out. And first of all, if it makes him happier and more comfortable, I'm happy. And if he performs a little better, reaches and drives, looks good, level top line, all of that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What about you, Dale? I know you've mentioned some stuff before. What do you how do you kind of handle the the stiffness and the joints?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, I I carry I carry that along in there, you know. I carry that and entice and dexamethasone and stuff for poop. Lots of stuff for poop, you know, because poop is a problem. You know, but that that, you know, those are good things to have on hand because when you when you need it, you need it. And you're gonna spend I would used to would have said hundreds of dollars, now it's thousands of dollars in going to a trip and you know, your travel, your your just your entries, your reservations, all this stuff. If you don't have that stuff with you, it's kinda like you're driving without insurance. Like I'm gonna get there and what if you know, probably you won't need it. It's the best case scenario if you don't need it. You know, yay. But if you have that on hand, it's just a it's just an insurance policy. And it and it's kind of like once somebody says, Did you unplug the coffee pot? Well then you have to go back or the house will burn down. And so it's just it's a good thing to have, you know, you know, that met Medicam or what's the other one that's that's so commonly used, uh that you know, they're just a butte, uh those kind of things that you know, just to keep them from whether it's from being groomed on the table, or sometimes they'll do something silly and they'll you know, get joffled around or something like that. It's just not a bad thing. It's a little insurance policy to kind of turn around a potential disaster weekend.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, poop's a problem, and it's like yeah, at the same no poop is a problem too, you know, like not having poop, problem. You know, that's that you you gotta make sure that they're they're eating and going to the bathroom.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But it's usually keeping stools tight is where 'cause usually like we're trying to get them to eat on the road. It's hard with toy breeds because that's one big dog people don't really appreciate, you know, they put in their four cups of dry biscuit and that's gone. Toy dogs are kind of like, what if we puree it? What if we put little, you know, did the little Gordon Ramsay thing. You know, what what if we did this? Would you eat it then? You know, and all that stuff that we try pull all the tricks out of the hat, try to get them to eat so that they don't drop in weight on a four-day weekend. And and so sometimes that can be like for a little GI disaster.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, introduce something new to them when you're at a show. That's very smart. You know, they're gonna shit themselves pretty good. All right. So so let's talk a little bit about grooming. And I know a lot of people do this. I I don't specifically do it, but maybe I will start. How do you how do you prep the coat differently day of show versus so if you groom day of show, say you shampoo and conditioner, you bathe them every morning before the show, I guess that would be question number one. Do you do it every day before the show or do you just do it once before the weekend? Um, but how does that shampoo and conditioner routine differ from like normal weekly sham Yeah, super question.
SPEAKER_02So first thing with the the shampoo and conditioning on the show weekends is you first the rule number one is do what looks best on your dog. I've had a dog that I specialed with with a wonderful coat texture, but he looked best day up show. The dog I'm showing now, the night before, I'll bathe him, get him bone dry so he doesn't get any dings or dents during the night, and he looks best the day after. I tend to bathe every night or every other night. I don't like to go much further than that because that beautiful, sleek, uh, silky look that you get on the ears and the coat where the hairs aren't getting a little bit oily or too much product and separating, they just look like glass. That's only going to happen where they're super clean. So one of the things that I do differently is I I may use a heavier conditioning shampoo and conditioner during the off time to get this dog in great shape so that when the weekend comes, I may want to use just a shampoo and no conditioner because I already have the coat in such good condition. I don't want anything to weigh it down. I want like that squeaky clean feeling, but with a good quality shampoo so that that code is gonna look as silky, as full, as sleek as possible. And, you know, quick disclaimer if you pay attention to AKC rules and abide accordingly. So these are things that you may want to do for a show. You may want to do at home if you just want your dog to look prettier. But if you iron your dog, that's something that some people do on the show weekend that they don't do during a regular grooming routine. And we may bounce back to ironing, but just a quick word. If you're ever going to iron any dog's hair, there's a few rules to keep in mind. One, start with the lowest, get a very good iron. You know, they're all pretty decent these days. They're ceramic coated, whatever. Get a good iron that has a temperature display on it. Start at a low temperature. Every iron is calibrated different. So 290 degrees for my iron might feel like 400 degrees on a low-end iron you get at Walmart or something. So start low, see what works. You always want to use that the lowest heat that will work for your dog and don't cook the hair. Second, save ironing for when you really want it to count. It can damage the coat. So don't just indiscriminately constantly run a hot iron through your dog's hair and burn it. The other thing you want to do when you iron, and this is super key, is for any product, but especially when you iron, everything you spray or use on your dog's coat has the potential to stain a coat, particularly a white coat. So if you spray a human hairspray that has a type of lacquer in it, that lacquer can get very yellowish. You'll see it build up if you have use hairsprays at home. It's got a yellow tint to it. Same for when you iron, you always want to have that coat slightly mist it with something before you run that hot iron down. Don't use anything. Talk to your friends, talk to the professionals, experiment, but use something that's not, when it's combined with heat, it's not going to leave a yellow cast on that coat. If nothing else, and you're unsure, mist a tiny bit of distilled water before you iron. So that that's just a couple things. I'm sure you have other questions, Tyson, but you know, that's sort of 101 for me getting started on a show weekend.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that makes sense. What about what about you, Dale? I know you like to you talk a lot about clean as free. So how does your show day differ than regular days?
SPEAKER_00So every dog has its own coat and how much coat they're in. And you have to evaluate what's right for that dog and its coat that it's in now. So if I have a if I have a bitch that's trying to blow coat, you know, I might not bathe, and you know, and I've got a set of shows, I might not bathe her as aggressively because she's she's like gonna blow this hair. And so I might go ahead and try to just like clean fringes and clean and not try to, you know, get her all the way blown all the way out. If I especially like for like an occasion type of thing, if you have you're bringing out a veteran or something like that, a dog that you're maybe not trying to keep in a coat all year long, where you're rolling that coat, trying to keep the new hair coming in and the old hair going out. So you have to kind of evaluate what you're gonna do with the hair and what hair this dog has. Then the other thing is, and we we talked about this before, try it at home. Try it on, try it on your retirees, try it on your your your pet before you go ahead and because we get bored, we're at this at the show, got four hours to kill before the group, you're gonna head on over to the vendor booth and see what magic is for sale and go ahead and spray this, spray this uh, this, all these magic potions on our dog. Not the time, not the place. You want to try these at home so that if it goes badly and you don't turn your dog into a greasy mess, that you're not uh, you know, an hour away from showtime and your dog looks like bad. So practice with that at home, see what the how they do. Like for a lot of times, like with our breed, because we have we're not double coated, but we have undercoat. You really want to kind of um figure out where where they are on that coat. When the maintenance baths, heavy conditioner, you know, get them all the way dry, but we're not gonna maybe line dry them, you know, that kind of thing is you just kind of like let the hair rest and restore. When you get to the show, maybe no conditioner, maybe maybe spot conditioner. Like if you're wanting to go through and like go through the body, put a little conditioner in there, but not in the ears and in the tail, that type of thing. Like with cavaliers, where you have a jacket, you know, you're gonna bathe the ears and the leggings and maybe the tail, but you don't want to get that jacket wet because that's you're you're working really hard to get that fitted down. So, you know, all these are things that you try at home. And because your at-home stuff, you've got you have all your equipment, you're not trying to make it work at a showground. Sometimes, you know, like with toy people, we tend to want to bathe them in the hotel room because we have hot water. We're not that we're not gonna be standing out there with the grooming table next to the lab door people hosing off our toy dogs. And some of those products, they don't rinse out with out with cold water. You need warm water. So have a plan on as to how you're going to, you know, what if what's our if you have an RV, that's great. If you go to, if you're gonna bathe them at the at the hotel, I'm sure I've seen Scott's tax up, you know, you have you're gonna have to bring a hose or bring something with you that you can, whether it's a bicycle uh inner tube or something you can fit over the end, you can you can use it a good rinse on there because part of those products to be uh to be effective, have you have to have them in the right concentration and you have to be able to rinse them out. And so you you know, having that kind of in hand is kind of a plus.
SPEAKER_01I'd hate to take a shower in only cold water, and we're all about our toy breeds and not pissing them off and making sure that they're ready for the ring. And one way to make sure they're not ready for the ring, give them a cold bath right beforehand. Yeah, they're not gonna be very happy. But a couple of questions off of that. One of the questions that I think everybody wants to know, and nobody really probably knows, or you know, but maybe your guys' experience would would kind of help answer this without being chemists or scientists. But is there really a big difference in product, you know, shampoos and and conditioners? I mean, there's there's so many out there, you know, you go to these dog websites and I mean it's like, are these products different than human products? Or can we just go to Walmart and buy a human shampoo and conditioner and you know that would work just fine on our dogs? Have you guys noticed anything like that, Scott?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, we talked about this a little bit before, but for sure, the makeup and pH of a dog's fur or slash hair is very different from humans and pet shampoos, good show dog shampoos, the good lines are made to take that into consideration. You can certainly get by with using human or lower grade products at home. Use it on your pets, but quite honestly, for the show dog, if and this is all about getting that little tiny extra edge. Maybe it's a difference between winners and reserves or no group placement, group four, group four or group one, but it does make a difference. And some of the science behind it is the cheaper shampoos, whether it's for humans or for pets, have a lot of wax in them. The wax and the silicone and those shampoos is because they want you to get an instant result of shiny. It'll work. Bathe your Japanese chin, you know, with perk shampoo or some cheap human shampoo in a weekend. They may look good for one day. Keep using that stuff. You're gonna slowly get a wax buildup. You're gonna have to use clarifying or stripping shampoos to get it out, and you're gonna get a really drab coat. So I firmly believe that there's science behind these products. I think there's a lot of good professional lines and experiment with them. I know they're expensive. Sometimes you can, you know, if you're if you're at a show and you're at one of the booths and you're spending a good amount of money buying, you know, some shears or a brush or comb, these guys are happy to give you a little sample of some of these premium line shampoos and see how they work for you. Um sort of like data in, data out. Use good products, it will show up. You know, lots of people will brag. I just you know bathed my dog and don't dishwashing detergent and it's great every time. Well, that's good. Keep doing it for a year and come back and let me know how your how your chin looks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. How about you, Dale? Anything to add to that?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, that's all true. And you know, it's like it's probably it's always good if somebody in your show team is a product junkie. Like Jane likes to shop and she's like, we're gonna try this or we're gonna try that. Or if you see sometimes handlers, if you think their dogs look really good, you look and pay attention to what products they're using. If you think that that that that that get you know is showing up well and holding up well, because usually what you use on the specials has to be able to keep that hair in condition, you know, for an extended period of time. Yes, if you're gonna go to one or two shows a year, you can use any kind of soap, I imagine, and probably get them clean enough to show. And you're gonna get a modicum of success from that. But if you want to show that dog repeatedly, if you want that dog's condition to build, and if you want that hair to be able to be maintained, you know, like for uh, you know, bathing them, blowing them out, even ironing, all of that, you've got to go have you're gonna have to use have products that are especially, you know, have formulated stuff to protect, strengthen. And you know, a lot of times everybody wants to get their dogs whiter. And and you really have to be careful about whitening shampoos because you don't you start pulling in a bunch of blueing and all of a sudden your dog's a smurf. And you know, you really it's more about condition. Healthier hair looks better, you know, healthier hair looks stronger, more natural, and it gives you, you know, so or anything you can do to build, maintain condition is and premium products are definitely the way of the future. When you look back at the at the old show pictures from the 70s, 80s, 90s, those dogs don't look like they do now. I mean, they had soap back then, they even had running water. But uh, but the you know, the dogs now, better. Why? Better products, better products, and people have taken it up another level. And watch the people with hair dogs, because they, you know, those those are people that their livelihood is about about products just kind of like where you're going over and saying hi, just kind of peek in the tack box, see what they got, what they're what they're washing their dogs with. Used to be in the old days, they'd pull the labels off. So, you know, it's like, you know, anybody to see what I'm using on my dogs, you know. But those premium products are definitely the way to go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I like uh using clear bottles and mixing the product in there and just having it, you know, just no label bottles, and then you know, it's like nobody, nobody knows what you're using. So what about like, you know, I know uh I know, you know, you we we're practicing at home. We're trying to get, you know, we're trying to figure out what works best for our dog. What, you know, it's like my bitch special that I had last year, you know, is like she needed to be bathed every morning before a show. That's just how she looked good. It didn't, it didn't last super long, you know, it didn't last hours and hours, is like kind of need to be every morning before the show. Um, but she has a lot of black. And so that kind of brings up that topic of the hair colors. It's a difference in chin, right? The black hair, in my opinion, is totally different than the white hair. It's a different feel, it's a different texture, it needs different grooming, in my opinion. Am I totally off my rocker or have you guys is that a thing?
SPEAKER_02For me, uh you're you're totally on base with that there's a difference between black and white, but at least for my dogs, the ones I've worked with, it's the white that needs different treatment. So the black for me, black reflects light, of course, much better. So it's shinier. And don't ask me why. It's something with the alleles or whatever that produce black. And I think white in the chin, and I'm not even gonna go there, but I think it has something to do. It's not really white, but it's absence of another color. But Whatever it is, the black reflects light. It's shining. Strangely enough, for me, I find the black to also have a slightly silkier texture. Feels great. Much easier for me to work with. The black on the ears, the little bit of black on the back. I think where you need to be careful, especially even with the correct silky coat. As Dale said, it's not a double coat, but it's still profuse if it's correct. The white can start feeling soft. Cotton is not the right word, but it's not reflecting the light. It's getting perfuse. The texture's a little softer than the black hair. For me, I have to pay particular attention to the to that hair so that it lies flat. It's as shiny as it can be for white hair, and it doesn't kind of get that poofy sort of flyaway feeling. The black hair is much easier for me to take care of.
SPEAKER_01Okay. What about you, Dale? Is there what about red and whites and sable? Like, where does that coloring kind of come in as far as texture?
SPEAKER_00The white hair is a more porous hair. It's more open. You know, the pigment in in a in a colored hair makes for a stronger hair shaft. So the white hair is going to be easier to break, easier to pick up, you know, pick up stain. It's just a strong the black hair is a stronger hair. So it's, you know, which is makes it more resilient and makes it, it's also a different texture because of how open it is. One thing that, you know, these products do can do is like, you know, because we'll go back through and look at pictures of dogs from you know 30 years ago. And the ones that appeared to have silky hair back then, man, that must have been really good hair because those dogs were getting like semi-annual baths. You know, that's really good hair. Then versus like now with the products and all that. And I think this is kind of kind of an interesting point for people that have drop-coated breeds. You know, even though you can fix a lot of things with your products and your conditioning, you know, ultimately don't kid yourself in in your breeding program. If your dog's coat, if you don't, if you're if you're having coat issues, just don't fix it with product, identify it, fix it for breeding, look for those, looks for those qualities in the hair on the dogs that you keep going forward. I think that that's kind of like really important. Like when we had Maltese every now and then, even if we weren't going to show something, we'd still grow it out into coat just to see what kind of coat it would grow. You know, see what, see what it looked like when it was in hair, to kind of decide what is this a silk, a modified silk, how silky is silk, is it, you know. I mean, all of those things are are are really important. And you know, and then you once you know, then you can pick the products to get you to where you need to be, you know, and then and to get that. Because ultimately, hair that shows movement is winning hair, you know. So when when that when they're when they're moving through and you can see the dog's extension and reach and carriage and the hair is flowing, and you've got like the Beyonce vanity fan going there where the hair is flowing, it makes a beautiful picture. When when hair is dirty or the head texture isn't right, and they just kind of look like cousin it from the Adams family and just a big bunch of hair and just kind of bouncing around, you know, that's not pretty hair. So any kind of when you have hair that shows movement, motion, reflects light, that just catches the eye. It might not even be as good a dog, but the conditioning and the quality of the hair is just so appealing. It makes you want to touch it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Dale, plush puppy just to your point used to make a product, maybe still does call it swishy coat. I think it was called swish coat or swishy coat because they knew it was appealing to us. You want that coat to move and to flow, you don't want it bouncing, as you said. And and Tyson, one of the things Dale said before is this ties in now, is he talked about, hey, there's certain dogs, bitches, what have you, that I may just bathe certain parts of it, some furnishings. If I could bathe one thing, if you said, hey, Scott, all week and all you can do is pick one part of your dog you could bathe, for me, it would be the black, the red, the lemon ears, because those for me, with that coat, with that wonderful texture, it's gonna look dirty the fastest and start splitting and not have the mirror-like sheen. And it makes me think, you know, a little secret to share, and and I can't remember if we talked about this before, but remember your dogs have wax inside of their ears and secretion, oily feeling things. So many people fail to wash the inside of the ear leather very well. So they wonder, why do my dog's ears always look limp or part of it looks silky and part of it looks stringy? If you don't get that underside clean as as much as you do the top part of the ear leather, it's gonna be a greasy mess. How can you expect it to look, you know, to its best advantage? So yeah, it kind of ties into what Dale said before.
SPEAKER_01What about the dogs that tend to get like a big bulky coat? Like, how do you handle that before you go into a show, Scott?
SPEAKER_02That's gonna be a great question. If you have a chin special with good coat and it's supposed to be perfused, and and our standard calls out where you will see the coat becoming more profuse, that will happen and you can start losing this beautiful outline. You know, our dogs they don't call for a long neck like a bichon. You just have a moderate length neck going into the shoulders. Well, all of a sudden you lost the neck because the coat is so perfused. First of all, what you don't want to do, and I know this from experience, don't go in there with thinning shears unless you're just a master groomer, because your thinning shears simply cut the hair at different lengths. It will look good for a while, but as those short pieces start growing and intermingle with the longer pieces, they have the effect of lifting it up rather than it lying flat. So now you're you've got a mess worse than what you start it with. Don't use thinning shears. Don't go in with scissors and cut it out. The best way to do it is to use a very fine-toothed comb, to use a raking tool, and you want to pull the coat is if your dog will tolerate it. There's not a lot of nerve endings there, and I don't pull hard, but I constantly work on the neck of my male dogs as they get older. I've had very talented groomers show me how to use some of the tools that will pull hair, not cut hair. Debulb them, and you're gonna keep this really pretty outline. Another thing that can happen is you can have a dog where you lose the neck. You can also have the top line messed up because they may start getting real flat at the shoulders if they have black hair and it's the silkier texture we talked about. And as you get to the porous little bit softer white coat in the back, it starts building up and you look like you have a dog that's high in the rear. Work that coat out in the back and keep it from sort of giving your dog that illusion of being a puffball. The dog I'm showing now will get a few little wispy hairs on top of his head and chin have naturally short hair up there. It's really beautiful to look at. He'll let me just hold it with my fingers and I just pull it out by hand. Very natural looking. Try to do stuff where you're getting the hair out from the root rather than getting in there with brutal tools like scissors or thinning shears and just making a choppy mess.
SPEAKER_01I'm waiting for the time where you say don't do something, and Dale's like, just get in there with the thinning shears and do it up. Yeah, he Dale maybe can do it, but I can't.
SPEAKER_00Well, the thing is, you're better off on it. Depends if you're this is a battle or a war. If this is just for today, if you're just trying to get it for today, then that's then okay, you can go ahead and do something for the moment. But if you're wanting a long-term plan, you're better off to obtain your shape by product than and by blowing them out strategically than you are by cutting the hair off. That's a long-term plan. You know, this is like if you can get in there and change the shape by using product and still keep the coat intact. That, you know, one of the one of the people that right now that is uh has a really super crazy talented and has a wonderful product line, does some good videos, Tony Cabrera, Starfire Products. I mean, he'll put some videos up, shows you how to use his products, how they good, he's a Pomeranium breeder, he's had multis, and he can tell you which product for which area, and to kind of show you how to get that dog's coat in condition and then keep it in condition, you know, because it's all it's one thing that's kind of tricky is we want our dogs to be able to be in con in coat for certain dates, like, oh, we've got this show coming up, you know, or this such and such. And so if we can do things to get the coat, get past the blows, get past the seasonal sheds, and have that coat in a restored state for our bigger shows, that's a big deal because being in coat, you know, oftentimes the size between one and two. You know, one of my favorite dogs in England at that at that specialty, the dog that I would have gladly taken home, just his coat wasn't in condition. So he was uh he was a really good dog. I'd rather bred to him, you know. He's a nice dog. But you can't win if you're not in condition to be in contentions, you know. Be aware from that. Trimming, I I think the very best trimming on on these breeds that are have a natural appearance, whether that's a pap, a pin, a cavalier, best trimming doesn't look trimmed. And so so I think you should really like look twice, work around it, you know, trim if you have to, but really be know where you know what you're trimming and know what the long-term thing is. Because just like, oh, we got hair sticking off that wrong. Oh, that's gone, not sticking out now. That's that's just for the moment, that's not a long-term goal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think you said that you said some at one point when we were talking once, and it was like that's kind of the difference between a regular dog and a ring and a special, is the the little bit extra that you can do that you put into it to make it look that extra special. And so all all good things that we're talking about here. What about what about things like water? You know, I know I one of the things Scott was talking about, like de-ionized water, regular water. Are we, you know, is that something that you do, Scott? Do you do you give them filtered water? Do are you bathing with like deionized water or anything like that? How does that affect them?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so at home, and and as Dale said before, find out at home what works. Luckily for me, the water in Charlotte's great, very clean. Had it tested. There's hardly any solids that are in it, or not much dissolved things. So it works for me to give them to bathe them in and for their drinking water. I'm super lucky, and I and part of it is luck, part of it's good care. I don't get the red eye staining, which some people can get from their conditions, maybe their water. However, you know, we've talked and just a lot about clean is free. Well, what else? There's two other things that are free. Hotel water is free and the diarrhea you get from hotel water is free. So while I don't have to worry about the water I give them at home for the little bit of extra effort, and you know, if think about all the money you spend, you know, the mere pennies to buy it. I bring bottled water to every show, and they are not drinking a drop of water from the hotel tap, from the show tap. Maybe they could. They might be just fine. It's not worth it to get diarrhea. And I'm excited, I'm in the group ring, and you know, or five minutes before, and the chin gets diarrhea on those beautiful white skirts. I mean, you're just you're screwed, you're desperate, you're rushing now that you're nervous, the dog is nervous. So that's what I do with water. If I use water in any kind of atomizer, I will use a distilled water because even a bottled water, you don't know if it's going to have some element in it that might leave a color. So that's when I'll use a distilled water. One other thought on trimming, just to go back to this, because I think this is important. I talked a lot about not using scissors, but there's three places I do use scissors. Pads of the feet. Well, the feet, the pads. If you I've seen people let the pads, the hair between the pads of the feet grow so long that it covers all of the pads. And what happens is you have a chin that's walking around ice skating if it's on a slick surface, tile, wood, which they a lot of them are if they're kept in a dog room, a kennel, or wherever you keep them in your house. So now you're getting no traction, weak knees, no muscle development. Hate it. Keep the pads trimmed. Another thing, these beautiful slippers, the the fringe that grows at the front of the foot. I love it. It's a home, you know, one of the hallmarks of the breed. It gives you that oriental character to the dog. Our standard says that the chin can stand slightly outwards on their front. So take a chin, doesn't stand perfectly front to begin with. It's a little left right. Now you've got this fringe and it starts growing outwards at a curve. So now it gives the appearance that the feet are doing this. So what I do if that happens, and that hair, you can forget it. You can't really blow dry it straight. You can't iron it straight. I'll cut it at the right angle to make it point forward and be sure. I lose a little length. I am happy to lose a little bit of that length on that, on those slippers, so that it doesn't give the illusion when it's moving towards the judge of going east-west. It doesn't give the illusion when it comes to a standstill on its front of looking like it's this. I've heard all around judges talk about, oh my God, I love that chin. I would have given them a best, I would have given them a group, but he was slightly east-west in the front. I understand, I don't like it. They should see that that's in our standard, but they can't remember every detail every time. Let's not make that worse by having those toes point out. Quickly, I use scissors too on the skirts and on the tail. This is me. There's dogs that have won multiple bests by not doing this. It's just my personal preference. I don't like the dog to get out of proportion by having a beautiful length of ear, and then the skirts and the tail are out of proportion. I feel it sort of drags the dog backwards. It drags the dog back down to have skirts trailing behind it, to have the tail trailing behind it. So I want to keep the appearance of a nice square short package. So I will, and I'm good, good at it now. I know the technique to use. I'll trim the tips of the tail so that it falls. It may just reach the ground or right above the ground. And I like my skirts to just at most maybe be an inch past the ground where by getting off those wispy tips, it doesn't look ragged. It doesn't trail behind them like a wedding train, keeps the dog looking square.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's good. That's good stuff there. Now, I mean, both of you are judges, and when you judge chin, how often is the determining factor, you know, how long their their hair uh coming off their feet is. Like I can guarantee you, neither of you probably have ever put up a chin with the longest toe hair.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's not gonna change my decision. What the point I was trying to make is if you want every advantage in the ring and that toe hair is starting to make the feet look more pronounced east-west, and you can easily address it, why not? There's some judge that's not a toy specialist that isn't gonna know we can go a little east-west. And that toe hair, mark my words, it'll I've heard it before. It will make the dog look even more easty-westy. And you know, why even have to do why deal with it if you can prevent it? Sorry, Dave.
SPEAKER_00So whatever you're whatever that is done the most in the ring is with the most weight of the decision. So most things that are done in the ring are moving. You're gonna move around, you're moving individually, you might move them some more. And if you have enough foot hair that it shapes, changes the fall of foot, it's distracting. And it may it doesn't make for a pretty outline, it doesn't look good. You have, I think, three living breeder judges of chin, you know. So if you show to one of those three living people that, you know, are you know, they probably wouldn't care if the dog had toe hair, might even find it to be kind of charming. But for the other 99.95%, it's gonna be a negative. It's gonna be distracting, it's gonna draw attention to the you know how the how the front looks standing, and it might look more than slightly towed out to them. So some dogs grow a lot of a lot of slipper, some don't. But if your dog grows, uh I trim it. I've always trimmed it. I take the thinning shears, I shape the foot, I like it to look natural. I want them to have long, pretty hair, hair toes, but it doesn't mean a hair foot doesn't necessarily mean a hairy foot. Because I I want them to stand and be pretty much honest on their legs, so I don't need them turning either way. So, you know, you're it you know, you're not showing to breeder judges, you're showing to all rounders. And the all-rounders, almost every breed, they're gonna not find that to be attractive. I got a dog from Japan a very, very, very, very long time ago, and he grew hair on his feet. My gosh, it was like and he was, I thought I thought that was kind of cool. I showed him a few times, and they're kind of nobody could get around it. They were like, oh my god, his front, I had a seizure, you know. And his front was not great, but it wasn't as bad as that. And once I trimmed his his feet up a little bit, man, he won right along. He was the top-winning Japanese import of all time, the only one to ever get group placements because it looked more palatable to him. So there's, you know, that I trim a little bit at the base of the tail because I want the I want the length of the back to end at the anus. So when the tail comes down, I want there to be a break right there. I don't want them to go three inches beyond that because I think that gives the illusion of more length. So if that can end there, that's good. As far as like how much some dogs can walk in a lot of hair and they can really, you know, carry a coat like this. A lot of the drop coated breeds, if they can walk in hair that's three and four inches on the ground. I'm not gonna say people don't like that, and it's it's it might be a winning look. A lot of dogs can't maneuver that. And if they start stepping on that coat or affecting their gait, it might be uh more of a hindrance than a big plus on conditioning. Because remember, primarily it's a lot of moving on these dogs, and so a lot of the decision is based on moving. And so you really want that to that's why we're talking about making the hair, the texture to show motion, to show movement. It's like a runway show. They wanted to say, oh my gosh, look how it goes down and back and how good that looks, you know. And that those you're trimming should enhance the hair that's there and it should make them hold the shape. That that's what that's what I think.
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