Bichon Pictures and Grooming

I got Dispatch as a Poodle, long story short, he's a bichon, Vet said so, probably a cross between a poodle and bichon. He has a little hound in him too, he's like RELAXED compared to most little dogs sometimes. Also there is the matter of those black straight hairs on his back by his tail.

He does not like to be groomed. When he was a puppy I tried to cut his hair a little the first time and it was a laughing battle in a lawn chair. It soon turned out to be a battle every time. Forget clipping his nails. I'd have the vet clip his nails and pull the hair out of his ears. I started getting him groomed but he didn't get invited back to some of the groomers and the last one didn't do as good a job as I did as far as I was concerned. I found Big Birds Groom Blog which is also one of my links over to your right. I figured out how to do a modified Bichon cut with the aid of cheese sticks, for the dog not for me. As you can see the results were great! The first two pictures are of him trimmed like a poodle and the grown out bad haircut I got from the last groomer. The last 3 were taken the fall of 2007 and 2008. I've also found training him to be helpful, he does sit, lay down, roll over, beg, and shake on command plus of course he walks on two legs like 10 ft across the floor for cheese or steak. We also know quite a few tricks he has taught us such as the bounce bounce move which means I'm gonna bug you till you play, bounce bounce followed by a whine or a bark which means PAY ATTENTION TO ME, the jumping from a high object to your arms move which means human had better catch dog, and the waiting to be picked up which he will assist you with by jumping or crawling into your arms. And as my son said we try to teach another dog a trick and Dis is like what do you want me to do, 3 flips and then walk across the room like a person, JUST GIMME THE TREAAT!! He also does whatever we are trying to get the other dog to do which is cute.

Granted the pictures are of an ungroomed dog and a freshly brushed dog but you will see what a difference the proper haircut and brushing can do for your bichon. Also the tail hair length was shorter on some of the earlier good grooming pictures because we had a labrador puppy that thought the bichons tail was a handle to grab him by and RUN. That's been a year ago and the tail has grown back out.
Oh yes the heavy collar I leave off unless he is going with me somewhere. The reason he has a big dog leather collar is because he destroyed his first cute little puppy collar in 10 minutes, chewed through it. I bought a heavier cloth collar, he knew what he was doing the second time, took 2 minutes for him to get rid of it. Thus the big dog collar.