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Step 4 – Trimming The Feet
Time To Complete: Depends upon skill level and dog cooperation level, approximately 5
minutes per foot
Benefits: Lovely "Cat's Foot", Clean, Healthy Foot
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Oooooh! I Don't Like All That
Nasty Hair 'Tween My Toes! |
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The Keeshond foot
is supposed to be a “cat’s foot”. To groom a nice tight cat-like foot,
start by removing all of the hair from between the pads on the underside of the foot using
your shears. Some dogs will be a
bit ticklish, be prepared for the occasional jerk of the foot. |
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Avoid cutting the pad as
this can easily become infected and is very slow to heal, causing temporary
lameness. Use your fingers to grasp the foot firmly and to spread the paw pads out so that
you can get at the foot hair. The more of this hair on the underside of the foot that you
can remove, the tighter the foot will be, The hair causes the foot to spread. |
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Once
all the hair is removed from between the pads on the underside of each foot, you are ready
to shape the foot, hock and pastern. |
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Shaping The Front Foot
Start by blunting off the front
of the foot at the toenail level. The more blunt you are able to
make this, the more cat-like the foot will be. |
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Use your small comb to
comb the hair down and forward on the foot, then blunt it all the way to the toenails with
your shears. The shorter your
dog’s nails, the easier it will be to get a nice blunt front to the foot and a
nice cat-like paw.
Round off the edges a bit.
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Then ,
taking your small comb again, reach down between each toe
and pull up the long hair that grows down between the toes. Comb all the hair on the top
of the foot upward against the grain. |
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Then take the scissors
and trim the longer hairs as if you were trimming the surface of a tennis ball, only this
tennis ball will have 3/8ths to 1/2 inch-long hair when you're done. |
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Trimming The Pastern
Next take the small comb and fluff out the hair on the pastern (back side
of the front foot, sort of like your wrist). Take the shears
and even up the pastern hair, trimming parallel to the pastern bone. Do
not trim this hair too short as it tends to give the dog the appearance of having
pencil thin legs. Just trim enough that all the hairs have been evened up to give a nice
clean look. |
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Do not trim the pasterns up any
higher than the dewclaw pad on the foreleg. |
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Do not trim any of the
long foreleg feathering. |
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Shaping The Rear Foot
Repeat the blunting procedure on
the rear foot. Also use the comb to pull up the hair
between the toes, comb up all the hair on the foot and round it off neatly with the shears.
Trimming The Hock
Now, with the small comb, fluff out all the hock hair. |
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Using your hair-holding hand to grasp the toes on the hind
foot, flex the toes in such a way as they would be if the dog were actually standing on
his foot at the moment. Now trim the hock hair parallel to
the foot. |
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Treat the hock almost as if it were a cylinder, trimming
and evening up the hair all the way around the back of the hock. |
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The breed is not supposed to be long-hocked so
avoid over trimming as it gives the appearance of very long hocks.
Do not trim any of the britches. Do not trim any higher than the top
of the hock. |
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