Grooming Your Havanese Pet © 2003 Cynthia Rust     www.cynadohavanese.com If you are not showing your dog in the breed ring, you have a few more options in coat maintenance other than just leaving it long & natural. While a pet clip will require a trip to a dog groomer every four to six weeks, it will be much easier for you to maintain on a day to day basis. One popular pet clip option is to clip the body hair to about 1 ½ inches. Careful shaving around the eyes may help prevent tearing problems with your Hav. Keep some of the topknot length as bangs, and retain some of the facial hair for balance. Normally with this cut you will also keep approximately 2/3 of the length on the tail, as well as most of the length on the ears. The nice thing about this particular look, is it still features one of the primary Havanese traits of hair falling forward over the eyes. It is also a good in-between cut to keep you from becoming shell-shocked the first time you cut down your full-coated Havanese friend. Starkette's Jewel of Janizona- "Jazz" There are many variations on this basic cut. Many people remove the bangs and sometimes the facial hair, clipping the top of head to match the body hair length. Some shorten the ear and tail length further, others prefer not to clip their length at all, opting for the more natural look in these areas. Even the length of body hair varies, and can look nice at 1 inch or even longer such as 2-3inches. As there is no required cut, you can let personal preference guide you. Following are a variety of alternate clips you can try on your dogs: CH Liveoak's Last Dance-"Grace" CH Yankee Joe vom Salzetal -"Joey" Liveoak's Swing Time-"Tess" HCA CH Liveoak's Daddy's Lil Dividend CH JoLain's Truly Awesome-"Taz" CH Liveoak's Black 'N Tango-"Tango" CH Liveoak's Truly Scrumptious -"Truly" Permission to reproduce and/or circulate this article is granted with the condition that it be disseminated in its entirety and the copyright/credit to Cynthia Rust & Cynado Havanese remains attached. Authored By © Cynthia Rust 2003 www.cynadohavanese.com Last modified May 5, 2004