Joanna here, talking about dogs again, for which I hope everybody will pardon me.
I am not actually more partial to dogs than to cats, but I have decided to talk about the history of Extreme Grooming. About fur topiary — a subject doubtless of burning interest to the generality — and there doesn’t seem to be much history of humanity trying to do this to cats.
Cats, if asked, would explain to you why this is so. Or you could experiment.
Thus I am not speaking of mere dog washing or dog brushing or the ever-
popular “Take that thing out and don’t come back till he doesn’t stink to high heavens” which is doubtless the origin of dog grooming back in the days when a nice dry cave was the most des res available.
And I’m not looking at yer King Charles Spaniel or Papillon getting the most delicate and minimal of snip, snip, snips to become even more perfectly beautiful, worthy though that subject is.
I’m looking at Dog as the canvas of the fur butchers art.
Dog grooming as a profession has to date back to the earliest hierarchical societies. The same Sumerian or Babylonian noblemen who tossed the reins of their horse to Hobbins the groom with a “Rub her down good and give her extra mash.” doubtless had a dogsbody washing mud off the hunting dogs and checking their footpads for thorns.
Our earliest specific references to dog grooms date to the Middle Ages. We know kennel boys lived with the dogs, cared for them, brushed their teeth, washed and groomed and curried their fur.
Somewhere along the line,
things gets kookie.
These stalwart Renaissance kennel lads decided to sculpt the hair of their fuzzier dogs
in patterns.
Can I just say “Poodle Cut?
How? When? Why?
How?
Well, proper shears were in hand in the Fifteenth Century.
There were the dogs, docile and good natured and furry.
There were the kennel lads. I imagine they got called out to help defleece the sheep.
It was just a matter of time.
Maybe everybody got drunk one night during the sheep shearing a
nd the guys from the kennel started making bets …?
When?
We got visuals from the end of the Fifteenth Century.
Why?
I’ve come across all sorts of explanations as to why somebody would denude dogs in those particular patterns.
Folks say maybe they took fur off the water dogs so they’d dry out faster but then they left a sort of hair jacket to protect the vital organs of the chest.
And, like, the joints.
None of these whifflings convince me whatsoever.
But I kinda know what they were really up to.
Consider the Lowchen or “Lion Dog”.
The name says it all. The cut makes these handheld dogs look like little lions with a mane and tufts of hair on the ankles and a pom pom at the end of the tail.
At this point the Lion Dog was not so much a breed of dog as an idea and a cut that could be handed out to any of several kinds of small companion dogs.
The idea of a lion cut took.
It became popular on two breeds of large working dog, the Portuguese Water Dog and the Poodle
— maybe because those water dogs had bushy medium-length hair that sculpted well.
The rest is history.
Though in 1800 what we think of as the poodle cut was not so standardized as you see above and to the right.
It was not ... ahem ... cut and dried.
So. What do you think?
Are we less creative than Fifteenth Century Kennel lads? Is it time for novel shaved patterns on guinea pigs? Ferrets? Gerbils? Teenaged boys?
Cats?