Now remember the tail on a cairn terrier should be that of a lovely, juicy, fat carrot. That’s the basic shape you should aim for. What I do is to comb the hair out so looking from above, try and put a center part in the tail. Comb the hair out sideways. If the cameraman can come and look, you see we want that sort of shape, wider at the base, tapering off to the tip of the tail.
So if you can see, you can see that I need to take a good inch with this tail out in order to achieve that shape that we need. No dog loves having the tail trimmed, I can assure you with that. See had it been one of the other breeds, I could have used scissors, I could have used the clippers. But in cairn terriers, we do not advocate that type of trimming, we want it to look perfectly natural for the cat to finish up looking as though it hasn’t really been attended to other than by thumb and finger and with the hair to have grown in its natural shape. So all we’re doing is removing the excess hair. And remember I'm coming to the tip of the tail and that tip of the tail have a lot of nerve ends in there.
So I've basically taken the one side of the tail. Just lift the hairs up again and I think the camera can see that, those longhairs really have all got to be plucked out, plucked away from the tail and the direction of your own body. There has to be a silence from time to time. You can’t talk your way and talk your way all the way through. Let your fingers do the talking. Comb it again, that side. Not only is a bit tough on the dog but it’s also a bit of tough on your own fingers but you’ll do get used to it.
Now if you can see, there is really quite a lot of hair there to trim out, so let’s start with the lace at the tail. Just open up the hairs a little, you can see what has to come out. Always bear in mind the shape that you want to achieve. There’s still quite a bit there as you can see so, you have to have infinite patience in achieving this, but believe me the end result is far better than me running the scissors straight up.
So there we have the tail that hopefully meets with your approval and will grow into a lovely carrot shape.
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