This is probably the most severe case of matting that has ever come into my salon.

This is probably the most severe case of matting that has ever come into my salon. I've been grooming for over a decade, so I've seen a lot, but this is probably the worst one that's actually come into my personal shop. This is a new client to us. They marked on their intake form that the dog was groomed 12 weeks ago, but as you can see, there is absolutely no way unless they mean they just gave it a bath. Luckily, the dog was so sweet and so patient with us, and the groomer that worked with him was so, so kind. This is what we started with. You can see that it was separated and just a mess. It's really important with these to start slow and try to find a good starting point, which is what she's doing here by trying to pull the mats apart and find the skin. Normally when dogs come in in this shape, they're not used to grooming at all and they're usually not very well behaved, so we're very fortunate that this guy was very cooperative, especially given the state that he was in. When dogs are in this shape, it's really important that you take your time and go slow and make sure that you're going the correct direction with your clippers because they're very easy to cut when the skin gets folded up into the mats. Now that he's getting circulation back to his ears, he's starting to shake his head a lot. We did put a happy hoodie on him during the process as a precaution to make sure that he doesn't get bad hematomas. His skin is really raw and irritated, but they did book out for six weeks. We really hope that they keep that appointment so we can get him on track for grooming in the future. He's a very good boy. He's a very good boy.