The best thing to do is to do all the edges and then we fill in the middle. What I like to do is comb the head hair back towards the tail because we’re doing the edges now and some people will say if we’re using thinning scissors, in the salon I'm on straight scissors because it’s much quicker, and what we want to do is we hold the scissors at a 90-degree angle. And if you can imagine, the point in between his eyes is the middle of the circle. So, where I’ve actually trimmed to the corner of his ear, these little ear bits are going to stick out with the circle, so we have a circle with two little ears sticking out. So, the first trim I do on the West Highland Terrier is actually the sides of the head.
So hold your scissors at a 90-degree angle, come behind all that coat with the blade flat on the body, and I scissor. I don’t want to go as far as the ear, so scissor just before the ear. Right now, to create this chrysanthemum effect, a chrysanthemum is obviously a flower, but the petals are shorter at the bottom, going longer at the top and this is what we want to create with the Westy head. So obviously the coat must be shorter at the base of the body, slightly shorter on the neck. Right, now to do the head furnishings at the base of the skull here, I’ll just turn him around so that you can see better. We want to find the base of the skull so feel with your comb, come down and there is Oscar’s—that’s the base of his skull. We want another half an inch to an inch behind that line so, slightly bring the coat up and then with your thinning scissors, graduate the coat into your neck furnishings. And we’re going to continue that line behind his ear, let me just get hold of the hair there just to pull his ear out of the way for safety and I've got hold of this underneath his jaw, let’s keep his head still.
You don’t want to see any visible scissor marks should be at a nice graduation from one length of coat to another. They will look for your thinning work, also how you handle the dog as well, safety reasons, for competition work as well. It’s always safety first. I’ll just hold that, get that right out of the way.
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