The bath can prove to be an important part of the Papillon grooming and can many times assist in helping to give your dog that extra little finished look. Using a good quality dog shampoo & conditioner is highly recommended. We look for a shampoo that will clean but not coat the hair shaft, does not over bubble, rinses out easily and puts a nice soft bright sparkle to the coat. Occasionally if the hair is appearing a bit limp we would suggest using a clarifying shampoo to wash any excess build up of oils & dirt from the coat. Over clarifying can sometimes cause the hair to dry out and possibly break off so overuse is not recommended. There are a number of bluing shampoos on the market and there are just as many methods to using a bluing product. The biggest tip we can give when using a Bluing shampoo is CAUTION! Over bluing, letting the blue sit on the coat or weekly bluing, can soak into the hair shaft and give your pretty white Pap the most lovely of lavender hues. There is no worse feeling than arriving ringside in a fluorescent lighted building to find out you have over blued your dog. We seldom use bluing products and will only use them when a dog’s coat looks very yellow and only after we have tried a clarifying and regular shampoo first.

The next step in the bathing process is use of a conditioner. A conditioner should help soften & nourish the coat plus reduce static. A good quality conditioner is important. We use a light conditioner that is lanolin free. Lanolin on the Papillon coat will eventually build up, cause a limp heavy look and sometimes give the coat a yellow dingy cast. Take special care to rinse and rinse again the fringe on the dog’s ears. Over conditioning will make the fringe clump and look oily. One of the biggest errors in bathing a dog is not totally rinsing the shampoo out of the coat. Lack of proper rinsing will cause the coat lay lifeless on the body and sometimes have a slightly oily texture. This is the reason why we look for a low sudsing and easy rinsing shampoo. Another common error in bathing the dog is not reading & following the directions on the product label. Most quality shampoos and conditioners require a ratio mixture of so many parts product to so many parts water. Making eyeball judgments or pouring straight from a bottle can cause a variety of different results from a limp coat and oily spots to a lack of cleansing.

Along with every pre show bath, a good blow-drying is a must. A variety of blow dryers from stand dryers to hand held dryers are available. Dryers can cost hundreds of dollars or fewer than twenty dollars. At home we use a stand-heated dryer that give us hands free ease and use. If a stand dryer is out of your price range, pick a hand held dryer with a couple of heat settings. We do not recommend cage drying when preparing the dog to be shown. Proper blow drying of your Papillon is a vital key to the overall finished look of the dog. A Papillon coat should be abundant, soft, silky, long & flowing. It is not a double coat and is not supposed to take on the puffy appearance of a double coat or stand up on end. When drying, always dry the body coat down in a line brushing style. The air of the dryer most often should be blowing in the direction the coat lays. Back brushing or brushing against the grain can cause the hair to look puffy, curl backward or be somewhat unruly. Take special care when drying your Papillons ear fringe. When drying the ear fringe we usually start with the dryer blowing on the back of the dogs ear and by brushing from the inner side of the ear near the base going towards the outside of the ear. In this area we do not brush against the grain of the hair but brush in the same direction the hair flows. After the back of the ear is dry we turn the dog or move the dryer to the front of the ear and dry any portions of the hair on the front side of the ear that may still be damp. Sometimes the short hair on the top of the ear may appear to clump together and give the impression that the ear is pointed. Occasionally we hear that some groomers will lightly trim this area. Trimming the ear in our opinion is a great big No No and will cause the groomer to continue to need to trim the ear in the future. Many times the short hair is in a growth stage that will be grown completely out in a few months. Instead of taking this drastic scissors measure we prefer to do the following. Take the ear leather in your hands and lightly separate the short hairs with our fingers or soft brush. The dryer should be on a low setting. Separating should be accomplished by going against the grain or brushing the short hair in the direction of the other ear, away from the potential point. By just taking a few extra moments in the drying time you can prevent that pointy eared looked. The application of moose, spraying bodifiers, or applying oil products can change the overall soft texture of the coat. The most important key to blow-drying is making sure the dog is dry all over. That includes not only on top of the coat but near the skin. If the coat is not sufficiently dry it can take on a wavy appearance.

After the drying the coat, it is time to start trimming. We usually begin with the feet. The front and rear feet should be trimmed to make the foot have a clean appearance and give the look of a hare foot. A hare foot resembles the foot of a rabbit. The foot should not be overtrimmed and should have a tuft or bit of hair coming to a point in the front of the foot. If this little bit of hair is missing, the dog will have what amounts to a cat foot. A cat foot is completely trimmed all around the outside of the foot, with no extra hair protruding from the front of the foot or toes.

Trimming the whiskers on show Papillons has always been debated among some breeders. We find that dogs with wider muzzles look more refined with the whiskers off. A cleaner look is also gained with the removal of the whiskers, but this grooming should be a personal decision. Use sharp scissors and have a bit of time to spend on this type of grooming. Some exhibitors even use small electric or battery powered clippers to remove excess whiskers on an around the face. If you choose the clipper method make sure that you do not trim to close to the muzzle. Trimming to close can give your dog a snippy look. Papillon whiskers are moveable and you will need to look in different directions to make sure you have removed them all. There are also stray whiskers that come out under the jaw and around the head of the dog that need to be trimmed short. If you decide to remove the whiskers also remove the long eyebrow whiskers that grow out over the eyes.

We like to clean up the hair around the anus of a show dog. In fact we do this with all of our dogs. Trimming up around the anus does not mean we scissor around the tail set similar to a Pom. Do not over trim! Just a couple of simple snips of the long wispy pieces of hair that grow around the anus & the pigmented portions of the anus gives a cleaner look and also prevents any remnants of feces from sticking to the coat. Use special care when scissoring around the anus as a wrong snip could really upset you and your dog.

The last grooming tip is trimming and cleaning up the look of the hock on the rear leg. The hock is the area up the rear leg to the stifle joint or knee. On many Papillons the hair on the rear or back of the hock gets fuzzy, long or very thick. This extra hair should be removed so the hock does not give the impression of heavy bone. Papillons should not have a heavy boned look, as they are a refined breed of dog. The extra hair should be combed outward from the hock and trimmed within a ½ inch of the hock, following the contour of that portion of the leg. The next step is thinning this leftover hair closer to the back of the hock. This step requires the use of thinning shears. Use the shears to take off extra hair without making the back of the hock seemed scissored. The thinning shears cut only some of the hair with each snip, but special care must be used to always have the teeth side of the shears away from the dog. This method gives a more natural appearance. It takes a bit of time to take off just the right amount of hair and patience and practice are important. The best thing to do is practice on a non-showing dog. This way if you do make a mistake, and we all do, no harm is done.

The tools needed to trim your Papillon are very important. This is one area where quality does count very much. A good pair of scissors and thinning shears will go a long way to improve the final look of your show Papillon. The basic tools are a sharp pair of scissors, a good quality pair of thinning shears, a fine steel comb and of course a pin brush. These are grooming tools that anyone showing Papillons should have on hand. A hand stripper, dremel tool and electric or battery-powered clippers can also be helpful in show grooming. We use two pair of scissors, a small 5-inch pair for fine close cutting, as in doing the pads on the feet, and a 7 1/2-inch pair for more general use. You can get away with just the small scissors to perform all of the show grooming. Thinning shears come in various varieties. They have different numbers of teeth that take more or less hair off with each closure of the shears. You may want to borrow different ones to experiment with to see how much hair is removed and which type you find more comfortable to use. A good steel comb is used to brush out and pull out the hair away from the foot or leg. A small slicker brush can also be used the same way. Take care and spend the extra money for a quality pin brush that has flexible pins that will not cause unwanted coat lost. As you can imagine it does help to train your dog to sit still while grooming is performed. All of this grooming and trimming is easier if the dog is under control. Most small dogs are not thrilled to have their feet held and messed with, so the best advice is to train your puppies at a young age to sit still for all sorts of grooming.

Good grooming is only one facet of a show Papillon. Included in the winning package, the dog must conform to the breed standard with overall breed type, structural soundness, an outgoing happy butterfly like temperament, proper texture & sufficiently coat. Another plus is good ring presentation. Good luck in your show grooming and we hope some of these tips and practices are useful and helpful. There is nothing prettier than a lovely butterfly in the ring.