Saturday, April 28, 2012

A Very Pleasant Saturday

Today I finally felt like I am on the mend.  Thank you so much for you good wishes and kind words.  I appreciate it more than I can tell you.  I have been going to bed between 8pm and 9pm all week.  I even went to sleep at nine last night.  I woke up feeling nicely rested at about 8:30.  As I made my morning tea, Liesl went to nap on the sofa and I set about disinfecting my kitchen counter tops.  My kitchen looks very pretty and hopefully is all germ free now. 

Other than Liesl's rally class, I stayed home today and enjoyed it.   It felt good to putter around the house and not be really sick.  I even got to stitch during the NASCAR race.  I am happy to say that it is now two thirds completed.  I am really glad that I decided to do this project.  

The other project that I had this weekend was grooming Liesl for my first time.   I love my dog groomer, however, she is getting close to retiring as she is almost 80.  Liesl loves her too, but the process of dropping her off was so stressful on both of us.  Liesl gets frantic and starts panting really hard.  I think a lot of it is that she has to be placed in a kennel.  Liesl was crated most of her time before she was dropped by angels into my life, and is terrified of them. I always figured that when my groomer does retire, it will be way too stressful for Liesl to have to meet a new groomer.  I have been talking with another mini schnauzer momma who has always groomed hers and said that it was so easy that I would be surprised.  

There are quite a number of tutorials on Youtube.  I started watching them to see how hard it would be. Most of the work is shaving them down with the electric clippers.  The videos showed direction to go in on the fur.  The ears take forever because they are so delicate.  What impressed me is that Liesl is a pro at getting groomed even when her momma is terrified.  Liesl was very patient and was not afraid of the clippers at all.  I did not do everything all at once.  I worked until Liesl started getting wiggly and then put everything away.  I do not need to have everything done at once.  She looks so beautiful.  I still have to trim up her feathers and the pads of her feet, but I can do a little at a time. I look forward to getting more confidence.  Best of all, the weather has warmed up so she will be a lot more comfortable.  During the hot months I can clip her a lot more often to keep her cool.  I am really grateful to people who take the time to do instructional videos on Youtube.  It was so helpful to see step by step instructions that were not overly technical.  Liesl looks so pretty and she seems to know that she looks good.  :)

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