Dear Newbie Guy,

What is considered over grooming when showing Golden Retrievers?

Jennifer Abramson, Toronto, Canada

Dear Jennifer,

I asked Guido about over grooming at lunch today. Here's what I've learned. Gone are the days when owning a pair of thinning shears and a blow dryer was considered over grooming. Today, you have to groom to considerable excess to cross into over grooming territory, but if you try hard enough, it is still possible. Here are some tips on what is required to over groom.

You are over grooming if …

• Your Golden Retriever looses more than six pounds of hair in one grooming session.
• You spend more money to sharpen your grooming shears than rent.
• You purchase Duurstede products in fifty-five gallon drums.
• You use Tim “The Toolman” Taylor's Binford 5000 turbo-charged eighty-five horsepower grooming shears.
• Your blow dryer has sufficient power to cold-start a 747 jet engine.
• You gait your Golden Retriever into the ring and the ring steward interrupts, “Excuse me, but the Labs are in ring six.”
• Your Golden Retriever's tail is best described as whippet-like.
• You require special medication to sleep so that you don't get out of bed at night to groom your dog.
• You remove so much coat from your dog's top line that the judge can count vertebrae.

As you can see, it takes quite a bit of grooming to over groom by today's standard. If you are not doing any of the above, odds are good you are not over grooming.

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