Here is the ungroomed head.  What you should notice is that because the hair everywhere is so long, the keen yet soft expression of the head is completely lost.  In particular note that there is no shape to the head.  Instead, the hair on and around the ears is too long.  The eyebrows are so long that the eyes look sad.  Even the muzzle hair and rough is so long that the character of the breed is lost.  So lets see what we can do to help this Norfolk out.

After having brushes his head, first off we are going to put the shape back into the muzzle.  Hairs that are so long they no longer frame the face will be pulled out to get that basic shape back.

We also want to recapture a clean under jaw.  This is better seen with a side profile later.

Next we will remove the hair in front of and on the ears that give a "horned" look to the head.  The ears are supposed to fold nicely.  There is so much hair under and in the ear that this is currently impossible.

Lastly, we are going to remove all the longest  hairs on the bridge of the muzzle and on the cheeks.  We need new growth here.  These long lengths just lie flat and don't add to the fuller look of the face when there are layers.

The side view shows how everything is over grown.  There is no shape, no breed character.

Imagine these lines are roughly the shape that you are looking to achieve.  We only take the longest hairs and we do a lot of combing after pulling a few hairs at a time.  Take it slow.

The ears will be hand stripped or plucked to get back their shape.  The overgrown eyebrows are done very easily and quickly and you'll see in the next picture what a huge difference that makes.  The line above the eye in this photo is meant to show that anything that falls below the eye will be stripped

OK Scruffy lets get to work.

Here is the side view after I have started to shape the head.  It is still rough and needs sculpting but you should now be able to much more clearly see where the outline of the side view is going.

So in minutes we have taken all the longest hairs off of the face to start to bring back the shape.  See the expressive eyes come back to life!  The ears that were lost are already lying much better now that the hair in front of and inside them has been removed. 

The face is not yet perfectly framed so we will do more work there.

The top part of the ear has been cleaned as well so that it has no hair that is longer than 1/8 inch (0.5 cm).  It now can fall neatly to the corner of the eye.  Notice that the eyebrows are no longer one big mess but slight and they blend into the skull neatly.  Most important is that at the corner of the eye the hair is pulled shortest.

The hair between the eyes should give a look that shows off the stop.  You can pull these out easiest with hemostats.

Looking from the side, the eyes needs to be pulled a little shorter at the outside corners.  The muzzle line is taking shape nicely.  The top of the skull is neat again.  The cheeks and ruff need lots more tidying to frame the face. 

The eyebrow here is much better.  Again, the cheeks and rough need blending to frame the face neatly.  Since there are very few layers in this dog's coat the choice here to take them down a little shorter than framing the face or leave them as they are and over the next few grooming sessions keep thinning them out for the new growth to soon come in.

Of course the back of the head also has to be blended into the skull, the neck and the ruff.  I remove all the hair from back of the ears to start.

A lot of blending has gone on here and there is more to do.

The grooming now frames the head, but a word of caution: you can over groom too...which is what this dog is beginning to look like.  They are terriers, so  a little scruffiness does look appropriate.

Part of the key to grooming the head nicely is imagining what hairs to remove to achieve the desired look you are after.  If you had a very light eyed dog you might want to leave more hair in front of them.  If you have a boxy muzzle  you might want to start with the hair at the nose shorter and gradually get longer at it comes to the cheek.  Big ears should have as little hair on the fringes of the ears as possible.  It is all optics.  So think what look you are after and then start grooming the head. 

The Body

It is all about outline for the body.  The skilled groomer can make even a bad dog look good

The topline here needs to be made to appear level.  Equally, the bottom line frames the silhouette and needs to be tidy.  The front and chest need to have nice shape.  Lastly, the legs need to fit nicely into the package.

Here is the final product.  Again, this is over sculpted but I do this to stress the general shape you should be after.  Skirts are a style issue.  They are used to accentuate things or hide attributes.  Long looking dogs often have a skirt that slopes downward from rear to front.  Optically this makes the dog appear shorter.  Dogs with long legs can appear to have shorter legs if there is a skirt.  Note that if you have a skirt it should blend from the side of the dog without an apparent line.  It should look to hang naturally of the sides of the dog.  

The Front

The Rear

There isn't any shape in this front.

Start with taking down the shoulders so they show the silhouette that you'd expect of the front of the Norfolk Terrier.  Refer back to my photos above with the white lines.  That will give you the silhouette to groom towards. 

This rear is actually in not bad shape.  To accentuate the shape I'll do a little more sculpting.

Most important here is having layers in the legs.  Layers seem to be harder to maintain in the rear legs compared with the front legs, but when done correctly they give the illusion of more substance.  Layers on the legs, like anywhere on the body, require regular "tipping".  That is, removing the longest hairs every two weeks or so to maintain the shape

Copyright 2008  - Wildgoose Reg Norwich Terriers

Breeders Victor Sattler and Corinne Folger

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