What if your clippers could do the work your scissors are doing?
Tigger is a large groodle with a curly poodle-type coat, and Prue Hammond grooms him the way she grooms most dogs - systematically, efficiently, and with a very clear idea of what she wants the clippers to do before scissors come anywhere near him. What's interesting about watching her work through this groom is how much shape she builds before she picks up a pair of scissors at all.
Most groomers think of clippers as the tool that removes length and scissors as the tool that creates shape. Prue doesn't draw that line quite so neatly. In this tutorial, the clippers are doing a significant portion of the shaping work - and the result is a groom that comes together faster and more consistently than it would if she'd relied on scissors to do all the heavy lifting.
Skimming as a technique
The key is skimming - using the blade lightly, at an angle, the way you'd use scissors if you were taking bulk off a section rather than cutting to a precise length. Done well, skimming removes coat that would otherwise have to be scissored, sets in the outline before fine tuning begins, and saves significant time on a large dog with a lot of coat. Done badly, it puts holes in the coat or creates uneven lines that are harder to fix than if you'd just used scissors in the first place.
Tigger's curly coat on a cold day makes this more interesting, not less. The curl changes how the coat responds to the blade, and Prue adjusts throughout - going with the grain, using wide blades that cover more area, reading the coat as she works rather than applying the same technique regardless of what's in front of her.
Building shape with blades
By the time Prue picks up scissors on Tigger, most of the major decisions have already been made. The outline is set. The angulation is roughed in. The transition from body to leg is established. What the scissors do is refine and connect - tidying what the clippers built rather than starting from scratch. It's a different way of thinking about the order of operations in a groom, and it's one that makes a real difference for any groomer working with curly or combination coats.
Prue's lesson with Tigger is available to Members inside igroomhub. Tigger also stars in Oodle Head Studies at igroomschool.
