As Friend of the Toast Ben G. put it, “It’s like when you see a very old man wearing a skintight Abercrombie and Fitch hoodie. The contrast is really something else.”
Please describe your old dogs’ haircuts in the comments.
My old dog has not had a haircut, but he is still alive! I think it won’t be long now, but my mother tells me he’s still happy and enjoying sunbeams.
Murphy is looking very dapper
Es_Petal+36
My sister has a Murphy-identical lady called Molly and it always makesme smile fondly when she has had her ears trimmed, it takes ten years off her!
Zelenka+43
My old dog is skinny and has practically no hair, but he has giant hideous fat tumors under his skin. A bit of hair would be an improvement, frankly. Ancient sighthounds! Not as pretty as they used to be.
gojetta+10
Oh God, my Italian Greyhound is only five and he already looks pretty old. He has that alopecia that blue greyhounds get, and so much white on his face already. I don’t even want to know how he will look once he’s actually old!
Zelenka+8
He will get lumpy and will have swollen joints but he will be a sweetheart forever. My in-laws’ Iggy lived to 18.
ppyajunebug+43
The dog groomer that my parents’ puppies go to has a Facebook page where they post all the groomed dogs, so please enjoy (if you come across a wee white pup named Fitz and a wee red pup named Piper, that’s our dogs)
mariahnotmaria+8
I love how they blow out all the ears so they are fluffy 😀
mmmcccfff+18
Wow, that album is the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you for making my day!
PSA: There are dogs named Mark, Spicey, and Gustav.
Howl+14
I got to Mark and laughed for an hour. I want to know what he did within the first week of arriving at his new home that made his family say, “ok, we HAVE to call him Mark now”. Ruffalo? Wahlberg? Hamill? This will keep me up tonight.
kateality+3
I had a Westie growing up whose name was Steve.
Siana720+10
PRINCE YAWNER
Strophoria+6
STRUDEL
marmot+4
PARTY CAKE
Mingus_Thurber+7
Oh Frogs I needed this SO MUCH.
I love Star. She looks like she was stapled together out of spare parts of random dogs.
jenniferb+3
O NICKY U HAZ A BOOFAUNT
Strophoria+6
Omg that spotted Jenny dog is my dream dog.
dorianneemmerton+1
I also want the Jenny dog.
ParadoxBox
Oh, two named Maggie and one named Molly just in the first twenty photos… which are my and my mother’s names. I find it amusing that both our names are in the top ten dog names consistently.
djm527+82
I am cackling.
My aussie’s last haircut made her look like she was wearing little pants – chaps. I complemented the cut with a pink hoodie sweatshirt.
I also watched 8 episodes of the Gilmore Girls alone in a row that night.
inkwashed+10
A+ comment in every possible way.
middlemarch+69
(Not to be a total creeper, but as Mallory is in the Bay and Murphy is Old and adopted, I often wonder if Murphy came from Muttville, an SF shelter for senior dogs.)
Anyway, I had a summer job at the SF SPCA a few years back, and sometimes we got got to “work” by hanging out with the old dogs at Muttville who had silly haircuts and if there is any functional definition of heaven that I can roll with, it is an ancient, scruffy terrier mix settling on your lap as other old dogs try to give you a quick lick on the cheek and then settle down to nap next to you.
This is work that I once got paid for, and literally why do I do anything else professionally, look at my life, look at my choices. Also, give your money to Muttville, they’re amazing. http://www.muttville.org/
citystillbreath+19
Just poked around the Muttville site fantasizing about what old dog I could adopt if I moved back to that area. Old doggies are the best!
alicia+35
Not for pay, but my brother once volunteered at the SPCA and if I was having a bad day would let me sit in the middle of the puppy run by myself and be covered in wriggling joy.
FrancesGnome+16
You have the best brother.
RosaRachel+2
If I were you I would’ve had a lot of bad days!
gentlehangovers+9
My husband and I volunteer at Muttville! It’s great. We have had several foster dogs from them, and the one we have now is a super-old Yorkie whose body fur is cut short, and head fur is left to spring up like a muppet.
hannahfish+55
My parents have a dalmatian, so no haircuts for him (just little needley furs that fall off him as though he were the Charlie Brown Christmas tree), but he gets festive colored spots for the different holidays and that is always great. He is still a little bit pink and green from Easter.
SarahDances+35
Not a seasonal haircut, but one of my parents’ French Bulldogs just had a mast cell tumor on her behind removed, so now her butt is completely shaved bare and she looks quite ridiculous!
Fortunately, biopsy results came back as good as could be expected. She was also spayed while under anesthesia, and has been completely unfazed by the fairly extensive rearranging of her bits. My theory is after a couple C-sections, the whole surgery thing is old hat to her, and why should it interfere with her monopoly on all the humans’ attention?
Alli525+3
It sounds like you have a Very Good Doggie.
laylaschlack+5
So glad she’s ok (and fixed)!
My Old Dog has alopecia, so her but is always bald. She’s got hair that sprouts out from below like a Colonel Sanders mustache. It’s a delight.
P. McLeod+24
My old dog ALMOST got a haircut, but he turned around and bit the groomer he’s known all his life, and she handed him back to me – he is no longer welcome.
Shelly+25
I have no animals, so I shall just say: MURPHY.
flying_ghoti+85
Can I be the jerk who specifically ignores the key words of the prompt and talks about a reasonably young cat’s haircut instead? I can? Cool. Because oh man, Hobgoblin’s new haircut is amazing. I mean, he’s an extremely weird looking cat to start with: imagine if David Bowie and Björk had a baby, who was a cat. (At least, we’re fairly sure he’s a cat; we mostly came to that conclusion by process of elimination.) He’s got a Persian smooshed face with a skogkattish body and whiskers like curly straws. He’s the weirdest-looking cat I’ve ever seen, mostly in a good way.
Last winter Hob had thyroid issues and his coat got all manky before he was diagnosed and treated, so we took him in for a lion cut in an attempt to restore his dignity in the long term by removing it entirely in the short term. But he was so matted that they had to cut away even more fur than a normal lion cut. The only thing that remained untouched was a stripe along his spine. Our absurd glam rock cat now has… a mohawk. And he completely rocks it. He actually seems very happy about it, too!
1sic1+100
How dare you write what you wrote and not provide pictures.
How DARE you.
Es_Petal+29
SECONDED.
Pegasus Olson+12
thought the same thing but you beat me to it.
flying_ghoti+108
I was painting you a picture through the magic of human language! Also, I’m at work. But, just for you, I trawled through our photos folder to find some suitable options. Most of the pictures include the baby (Hob loves to snuggle the baby, this is a True Thing That Is True and I can’t believe it any more than you can) but here’s a (inexplicably rotated?) picture of the Goblin which really shows off the haircut when it was brand new.
But wait… can we get a better look at how absurd his face is? Magnify and enhance!
Magnify… and enhance! My God, it’s full of whiskers.
1sic1+18
O.M.G.
Actually, he kinda looks Siberian-y. And the whole love of kids would fit.
Es_Petal+21
That is perfection in feline form!
Ivans_Sister+18
Hee, those whiskers!
Mingus_Thurber+51
Not just David Bowie and Bjork, but David Bowie as the Goblin King and Bjork in the Swan Dress. They had a baby. You have that baby now.
spygrl1+13
Thank you for these glorious photos!
apricots+5
<3!
sparkwoodand21+74
I’ve started calling dogs that look like Murphy… well, Murphys. Like, “Oh, look at that Murphy over there!” My husband gave me a weird look the first time I did this and I just rolled my eyes and sighed, like, OBVIOUSLY this dog type is called a Murphy, what is your DEAL.
dreadfulwind+10
Same, except one of the oldsters in my family had this hideous little floofy off-white dog of indeterminate age and origin when I was little, and consequently I now call both similar dogs and similar dustmops Murphy.
Apfelmoose+31
Looking very dapper, Murphy!
After her summer haircut, my old dog looks like a small grey lamb with tiny wild boar tusks.
Iris+4
Piiiiictures? *expression of delighted anticipation*
popelizbet+24
My dog does not require haircuts, but has settled into her spring routine of scratching her back on the Cedar tree and coming in covered in festive pollen.
dakimel+27
Because what’s better than cedar pollen outside? Cedar pollen inside!
michelle w.+63
My old dog is named Felix, but he looks so much more serious when he has a short haircut that we call him Stephen until it grows out.
Es_Petal+13
This is my favourite thing ever.
Alluvial_Fan+7
ADORABLE
celtadri+26
“It’s like the bustle was cut off his buttocks.”
celtadri+7
(That’s a description of my dog’s haircut btw, not Murphy’s.)
fcjaugusta+59
My family had a German shepherd/Austrialian shepherd/probably other things mix with a super long, SUPER thick coat (you could brush one side of her for 15 minutes, fill up a paper shopping bag with hair, and not be done with that side). This was great in the winter, when she would go outside and sleep in the snow just because. But summers in that area can get over 110 F. One year, when the dog was about 6 or 7 (so not OLD, but not young in German shepherd years, either) my sister had a bright idea and took her to the groomer, who shaved her completely. When they got home my dad thought my sister had brought home a new dog. She looked 30-40 pounds lighter, and ran around like she was a puppy again. We had attributed her slowness to her hip problems, but it turns out the heat was just as much to blame. I think my mom cried.
dakimel+16
awwww
RoseCamelia+61
My little monsters do not get haircuts. But when they get a foreleg shaved for a vein catheter (old dogs = not infrequent veterinary procedures) people comment at the dog park. Mostly kind inquiries as to their health. My dogs have heavy coats and the contrast from furry upper foreleg to lower showing delicate chicken bones under bare skin is arresting. Mr Rose and I have developed a very satisfying response:
“Oh that’s for showing off his/her Rolex.”
EvilOverLibrarian+50
Murphy has the sad older dog look down.
Basically: “My human subjected me to the INDIGNITY of my body being displayed for the world to see and now, she persists in taking PHOTOGRAPHS instead of petting me as is my right and her duty. SHAME UPON YOU HUMAN. SHAME.”
I donno. I like thinking of overblown monologues for pets.
treereenee+44
My childhood dog Pepper was a mini schnauzer and we used to have to give her eyebrow trims between visits to the groomers. She would always tear around the backyard happily afterwards, and we always said it was because she could seeeeeeeeeeee again!!!!!
She was also known for violently attacking the pop-up lawn sprinklers. Ah Pepper. RIP sweet doggy.
fcjaugusta+2
My dog LOVES sprinklers. It’s to the point now where if they’re on when we get to the dog park she tries to jump out the car window.
KatrinaGalena+10
Wilson looks a bit like a grey fawn when freshly shorn but otherwise is an actual Muppet.
Caro+15
Our old Retriever-cross had a thick ginger double-coat. We used to joke she was part-sheep, she had so much damn fur. Come spring, mum and I would sit out on the back lawn, with her laying on a deck chair between us, and take to her with the kitchen scissors. We’d end up with several bags full of fluff and barely even make a dent in it. The dog never minded, she loved the attention so long as we didn’t pull too much. She’d then walk around for weeks with strangely rectangular sections of fur all cut to different lengths, and we’d call her Patch, short for Patch-coat.
DelDryden+35
My sweet-but-strange old dog Zoe (not an actual dog, pretty sure she was a space alien sent to observe human behavior and report back) had a thick undercoat and long overcoat and after a few rough summers with grass burs we finally gave in and started doing the summer close-clip. The ex dubbed it “shaving the weird off her” because she would race around like crazy after the procedure then, for a few weeks, act almost like a normal dog.
RIP sweet Zoe, you were an odd dog but a good dog.
Mingus_Thurber+18
MELIS! That is not a dog who looks like an old man in a skintight A&F hoodie.
That is a dog who looks happy and ready for belly-rubs.
terb+12
I have never had a dog, but my long haired cat did once need to have his belly shaved because he jumped in turpentine.
That was fun
Katchatters+59
My wire-haired Jack Russell is 16. Last summer my parents thought it would be funny to give her a fauxhawk:
Her expression says it all, really. (Murphy looks VERY handsome.)
lampfriend+10
this is so beautiful
Iris+4
Like a razorback hog! <3
j_bird+10
I have never had the kind of dog that needs haircuts, so I’ll just say that the second picture, with the nose and the toes, is perfect. It’s got some kind of golden ratio + platonic ideal of dog thing going on.
Loren_Ipsum_+9
My sweet old dog is 14 and a schnauzer/poodle/dachsund/High Presbyterian mix about the size of a cat. She was a stray when we adopted her at 4 years old and had been neglected for so long and her curly fur grown so thick that she basically looked like a dog topiary. They had to almost shave her to get all the mats out, and then she was so sleek that she looked like a baby greyhound. Nowadays, when she gets groomed, they give her what they call a “teddy bear face,” which involves her body being pretty short and her head being floofy, and it’s basically the best?
Heathered+14
I truly like all the dogs of The Toast, but I FEEL so hard for Murphy you’d think I personally gave birth to him, left him on orphanage steps in a picnic basket and then rediscovered him here by accident. On a rough day I tend to come home with a headful of ants, too, so maybe we’re just of a similar disposition. Love that guy.
Andrea+23
One time I walked up to the bus stop and with his back to me was this hipster guy. Hoodie, jeans, electric-blue sneakers, messenger bag, Beats the same blue as the shoes. “Here,” I thought to myself, “is a twenty something tech bro off to take the bus downtown to his tech job from this, our cheap and faraway neighborhood.” Then he turned around and he was at least 65, possibly older.
I was unsettled and delighted.
MothsAndStars+5
I have a dude-friend who is almost 50, who still wears Converse and hoodies and cargo shorts. One day on my way over to his house I saw a gentleman of at least 70 with exactly the same build as dude-friend and wearing dude-friend’s exact uniform, and it was definitely not dude-friend’s dad.
I too was unsettled and delighted.
Megano!+5
My old dog is the type of dog that does not need a haircut, though he does need a brushin’, cuz he’s started to shed his winter coat and it’s all scraggly and bear-like. But I’ll probably wait until the snow is gone.
Layla
So glad she's ok (and fixed)!
My Old Dog has alopecia, so her but is always bald. She's got hair that sprouts out from below like a Colonel Sanders mustache. It's a delight.
Ktcook+4
Scruffy is 10 and 1/2 and has a lot of hair. When he gets a haircut, he transforms from a get-off-ma-lawn old guy to an adorble little teddy bear.
robotneedslove+5
Just booked our cat in for his annual lion’s cut, and I CAN’T WAIT!
He’s always a gremlin, but after a lion cut he is truly truly a gremlin. All his little weird body on display! And his happiness about it!
ricecooker+5
There was a trend in Taiwan to give certain dogs a square-ish head haircut. It was most…shapely.
Leslie+4
My childhood dog Lassie (inherited from my grandmother, who named her when she already had Alzheimers [Grandmother, not the dog] and couldn’t quite say where she got the idea for that name…) was a German shepherd-yellow lab mix. She was very soulful, and emotionally over-wrought, and had sort of a bolster-pillow fat distribution in her old age.
Anyway, we used to get her groomed at Pooch Parlor, where they basically did the full body shave, left her tail fluffy, and put these little paper bows behind her ears. It looked okay, but kind of incongruent with her pink, furry, wobbly labia that hung out a lot. My mom said they were from a botched historectomy, but that was frankly an unsatisfactory explanation.
MothsAndStars+3
Everything about this is amazing. Particularly your descriptions, but really just everything else too.
Bridal Makup
I pick this thought. I went by your site for the primitive extend besides simply been your fan. Watch posting as I am going to come upon to decipher it standard!!
My old dog has not had a haircut, but he is still alive! I think it won’t be long now, but my mother tells me he’s still happy and enjoying sunbeams.
Murphy is looking very dapper
My sister has a Murphy-identical lady called Molly and it always makesme smile fondly when she has had her ears trimmed, it takes ten years off her!
My old dog is skinny and has practically no hair, but he has giant hideous fat tumors under his skin. A bit of hair would be an improvement, frankly.
Ancient sighthounds! Not as pretty as they used to be.
Oh God, my Italian Greyhound is only five and he already looks pretty old. He has that alopecia that blue greyhounds get, and so much white on his face already. I don’t even want to know how he will look once he’s actually old!
He will get lumpy and will have swollen joints but he will be a sweetheart forever. My in-laws’ Iggy lived to 18.
The dog groomer that my parents’ puppies go to has a Facebook page where they post all the groomed dogs, so please enjoy (if you come across a wee white pup named Fitz and a wee red pup named Piper, that’s our dogs)
I love how they blow out all the ears so they are fluffy 😀
Wow, that album is the gift that keeps on giving. Thank you for making my day!
PSA: There are dogs named Mark, Spicey, and Gustav.
I got to Mark and laughed for an hour. I want to know what he did within the first week of arriving at his new home that made his family say, “ok, we HAVE to call him Mark now”. Ruffalo? Wahlberg? Hamill? This will keep me up tonight.
I had a Westie growing up whose name was Steve.
PRINCE YAWNER
STRUDEL
PARTY CAKE
Oh Frogs I needed this SO MUCH.
I love Star. She looks like she was stapled together out of spare parts of random dogs.
O NICKY U HAZ A BOOFAUNT
Omg that spotted Jenny dog is my dream dog.
I also want the Jenny dog.
Oh, two named Maggie and one named Molly just in the first twenty photos… which are my and my mother’s names. I find it amusing that both our names are in the top ten dog names consistently.
I am cackling.
My aussie’s last haircut made her look like she was wearing little pants – chaps. I complemented the cut with a pink hoodie sweatshirt.
I also watched 8 episodes of the Gilmore Girls alone in a row that night.
A+ comment in every possible way.
(Not to be a total creeper, but as Mallory is in the Bay and Murphy is Old and adopted, I often wonder if Murphy came from Muttville, an SF shelter for senior dogs.)
Anyway, I had a summer job at the SF SPCA a few years back, and sometimes we got got to “work” by hanging out with the old dogs at Muttville who had silly haircuts and if there is any functional definition of heaven that I can roll with, it is an ancient, scruffy terrier mix settling on your lap as other old dogs try to give you a quick lick on the cheek and then settle down to nap next to you.
This is work that I once got paid for, and literally why do I do anything else professionally, look at my life, look at my choices. Also, give your money to Muttville, they’re amazing. http://www.muttville.org/
Just poked around the Muttville site fantasizing about what old dog I could adopt if I moved back to that area. Old doggies are the best!
Not for pay, but my brother once volunteered at the SPCA and if I was having a bad day would let me sit in the middle of the puppy run by myself and be covered in wriggling joy.
You have the best brother.
If I were you I would’ve had a lot of bad days!
My husband and I volunteer at Muttville! It’s great. We have had several foster dogs from them, and the one we have now is a super-old Yorkie whose body fur is cut short, and head fur is left to spring up like a muppet.
My parents have a dalmatian, so no haircuts for him (just little needley furs that fall off him as though he were the Charlie Brown Christmas tree), but he gets festive colored spots for the different holidays and that is always great. He is still a little bit pink and green from Easter.
Not a seasonal haircut, but one of my parents’ French Bulldogs just had a mast cell tumor on her behind removed, so now her butt is completely shaved bare and she looks quite ridiculous!
Fortunately, biopsy results came back as good as could be expected. She was also spayed while under anesthesia, and has been completely unfazed by the fairly extensive rearranging of her bits. My theory is after a couple C-sections, the whole surgery thing is old hat to her, and why should it interfere with her monopoly on all the humans’ attention?
It sounds like you have a Very Good Doggie.
So glad she’s ok (and fixed)!
My Old Dog has alopecia, so her but is always bald. She’s got hair that sprouts out from below like a Colonel Sanders mustache. It’s a delight.
My old dog ALMOST got a haircut, but he turned around and bit the groomer he’s known all his life, and she handed him back to me – he is no longer welcome.
I have no animals, so I shall just say: MURPHY.
Can I be the jerk who specifically ignores the key words of the prompt and talks about a reasonably young cat’s haircut instead? I can? Cool. Because oh man, Hobgoblin’s new haircut is amazing. I mean, he’s an extremely weird looking cat to start with: imagine if David Bowie and Björk had a baby, who was a cat. (At least, we’re fairly sure he’s a cat; we mostly came to that conclusion by process of elimination.) He’s got a Persian smooshed face with a skogkattish body and whiskers like curly straws. He’s the weirdest-looking cat I’ve ever seen, mostly in a good way.
Last winter Hob had thyroid issues and his coat got all manky before he was diagnosed and treated, so we took him in for a lion cut in an attempt to restore his dignity in the long term by removing it entirely in the short term. But he was so matted that they had to cut away even more fur than a normal lion cut. The only thing that remained untouched was a stripe along his spine. Our absurd glam rock cat now has… a mohawk. And he completely rocks it. He actually seems very happy about it, too!
How dare you write what you wrote and not provide pictures.
How DARE you.
SECONDED.
thought the same thing but you beat me to it.
I was painting you a picture through the magic of human language! Also, I’m at work. But, just for you, I trawled through our photos folder to find some suitable options. Most of the pictures include the baby (Hob loves to snuggle the baby, this is a True Thing That Is True and I can’t believe it any more than you can) but here’s a (inexplicably rotated?) picture of the Goblin which really shows off the haircut when it was brand new.
But wait… can we get a better look at how absurd his face is? Magnify and enhance!
Magnify… and enhance!
My God, it’s full of whiskers.
O.M.G.
Actually, he kinda looks Siberian-y. And the whole love of kids would fit.
That is perfection in feline form!
Hee, those whiskers!
Not just David Bowie and Bjork, but David Bowie as the Goblin King and Bjork in the Swan Dress. They had a baby. You have that baby now.
Thank you for these glorious photos!
<3!
I’ve started calling dogs that look like Murphy… well, Murphys. Like, “Oh, look at that Murphy over there!” My husband gave me a weird look the first time I did this and I just rolled my eyes and sighed, like, OBVIOUSLY this dog type is called a Murphy, what is your DEAL.
Same, except one of the oldsters in my family had this hideous little floofy off-white dog of indeterminate age and origin when I was little, and consequently I now call both similar dogs and similar dustmops Murphy.
Looking very dapper, Murphy!
After her summer haircut, my old dog looks like a small grey lamb with tiny wild boar tusks.
Piiiiictures? *expression of delighted anticipation*
My dog does not require haircuts, but has settled into her spring routine of scratching her back on the Cedar tree and coming in covered in festive pollen.
Because what’s better than cedar pollen outside? Cedar pollen inside!
My old dog is named Felix, but he looks so much more serious when he has a short haircut that we call him Stephen until it grows out.
This is my favourite thing ever.
ADORABLE
“It’s like the bustle was cut off his buttocks.”
(That’s a description of my dog’s haircut btw, not Murphy’s.)
My family had a German shepherd/Austrialian shepherd/probably other things mix with a super long, SUPER thick coat (you could brush one side of her for 15 minutes, fill up a paper shopping bag with hair, and not be done with that side). This was great in the winter, when she would go outside and sleep in the snow just because. But summers in that area can get over 110 F. One year, when the dog was about 6 or 7 (so not OLD, but not young in German shepherd years, either) my sister had a bright idea and took her to the groomer, who shaved her completely. When they got home my dad thought my sister had brought home a new dog. She looked 30-40 pounds lighter, and ran around like she was a puppy again. We had attributed her slowness to her hip problems, but it turns out the heat was just as much to blame. I think my mom cried.
awwww
My little monsters do not get haircuts. But when they get a foreleg shaved for a vein catheter (old dogs = not infrequent veterinary procedures) people comment at the dog park. Mostly kind inquiries as to their health. My dogs have heavy coats and the contrast from furry upper foreleg to lower showing delicate chicken bones under bare skin is arresting. Mr Rose and I have developed a very satisfying response:
“Oh that’s for showing off his/her Rolex.”
Murphy has the sad older dog look down.
Basically: “My human subjected me to the INDIGNITY of my body being displayed for the world to see and now, she persists in taking PHOTOGRAPHS instead of petting me as is my right and her duty. SHAME UPON YOU HUMAN. SHAME.”
I donno. I like thinking of overblown monologues for pets.
My childhood dog Pepper was a mini schnauzer and we used to have to give her eyebrow trims between visits to the groomers. She would always tear around the backyard happily afterwards, and we always said it was because she could seeeeeeeeeeee again!!!!!
She was also known for violently attacking the pop-up lawn sprinklers. Ah Pepper. RIP sweet doggy.
My dog LOVES sprinklers. It’s to the point now where if they’re on when we get to the dog park she tries to jump out the car window.
Wilson looks a bit like a grey fawn when freshly shorn but otherwise is an actual Muppet.
Our old Retriever-cross had a thick ginger double-coat. We used to joke she was part-sheep, she had so much damn fur. Come spring, mum and I would sit out on the back lawn, with her laying on a deck chair between us, and take to her with the kitchen scissors. We’d end up with several bags full of fluff and barely even make a dent in it. The dog never minded, she loved the attention so long as we didn’t pull too much. She’d then walk around for weeks with strangely rectangular sections of fur all cut to different lengths, and we’d call her Patch, short for Patch-coat.
My sweet-but-strange old dog Zoe (not an actual dog, pretty sure she was a space alien sent to observe human behavior and report back) had a thick undercoat and long overcoat and after a few rough summers with grass burs we finally gave in and started doing the summer close-clip. The ex dubbed it “shaving the weird off her” because she would race around like crazy after the procedure then, for a few weeks, act almost like a normal dog.
RIP sweet Zoe, you were an odd dog but a good dog.
MELIS! That is not a dog who looks like an old man in a skintight A&F hoodie.
That is a dog who looks happy and ready for belly-rubs.
I have never had a dog, but my long haired cat did once need to have his belly shaved because he jumped in turpentine.
That was fun
My wire-haired Jack Russell is 16. Last summer my parents thought it would be funny to give her a fauxhawk:
Her expression says it all, really. (Murphy looks VERY handsome.)
this is so beautiful
Like a razorback hog! <3
I have never had the kind of dog that needs haircuts, so I’ll just say that the second picture, with the nose and the toes, is perfect. It’s got some kind of golden ratio + platonic ideal of dog thing going on.
My sweet old dog is 14 and a schnauzer/poodle/dachsund/High Presbyterian mix about the size of a cat. She was a stray when we adopted her at 4 years old and had been neglected for so long and her curly fur grown so thick that she basically looked like a dog topiary. They had to almost shave her to get all the mats out, and then she was so sleek that she looked like a baby greyhound. Nowadays, when she gets groomed, they give her what they call a “teddy bear face,” which involves her body being pretty short and her head being floofy, and it’s basically the best?
I truly like all the dogs of The Toast, but I FEEL so hard for Murphy you’d think I personally gave birth to him, left him on orphanage steps in a picnic basket and then rediscovered him here by accident. On a rough day I tend to come home with a headful of ants, too, so maybe we’re just of a similar disposition. Love that guy.
One time I walked up to the bus stop and with his back to me was this hipster guy. Hoodie, jeans, electric-blue sneakers, messenger bag, Beats the same blue as the shoes. “Here,” I thought to myself, “is a twenty something tech bro off to take the bus downtown to his tech job from this, our cheap and faraway neighborhood.” Then he turned around and he was at least 65, possibly older.
I was unsettled and delighted.
I have a dude-friend who is almost 50, who still wears Converse and hoodies and cargo shorts. One day on my way over to his house I saw a gentleman of at least 70 with exactly the same build as dude-friend and wearing dude-friend’s exact uniform, and it was definitely not dude-friend’s dad.
I too was unsettled and delighted.
My old dog is the type of dog that does not need a haircut, though he does need a brushin’, cuz he’s started to shed his winter coat and it’s all scraggly and bear-like. But I’ll probably wait until the snow is gone.
So glad she's ok (and fixed)!
My Old Dog has alopecia, so her but is always bald. She's got hair that sprouts out from below like a Colonel Sanders mustache. It's a delight.
Scruffy is 10 and 1/2 and has a lot of hair. When he gets a haircut, he transforms from a get-off-ma-lawn old guy to an adorble little teddy bear.
Just booked our cat in for his annual lion’s cut, and I CAN’T WAIT!
He’s always a gremlin, but after a lion cut he is truly truly a gremlin. All his little weird body on display! And his happiness about it!
There was a trend in Taiwan to give certain dogs a square-ish head haircut. It was most…shapely.
My childhood dog Lassie (inherited from my grandmother, who named her when she already had Alzheimers [Grandmother, not the dog] and couldn’t quite say where she got the idea for that name…) was a German shepherd-yellow lab mix. She was very soulful, and emotionally over-wrought, and had sort of a bolster-pillow fat distribution in her old age.
Anyway, we used to get her groomed at Pooch Parlor, where they basically did the full body shave, left her tail fluffy, and put these little paper bows behind her ears. It looked okay, but kind of incongruent with her pink, furry, wobbly labia that hung out a lot. My mom said they were from a botched historectomy, but that was frankly an unsatisfactory explanation.
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