poodles

i had a doctor's appointment yesterday. he and i were talking about dogs. it turns out both of us had miniture poodles at one time or another and both of us thought they were the smartest dogs we ever met. we clipped ours in a froo froo cut ONCE. she didn't like it and neither did we. after that, at the beginning of each summer we just shaved her down. she was fine with it as we were. i wish i kept all of her fur. i could have spun the MOST glorious yarn in the world. this was long long long ago when i was a child. still and all, i SHOULD have known.

poodles are NOT who you think they are by the way. they are VERY bright, VERY loyal and VERY athletic. they don't like bows in their hair (i don't like them in mine either by the way).


Hair-do's through the ages
Tools
Assuming that grooming practices were pre-tested on people before they were used on our Poodles, here's a quick (and very incomplete) review of the history of our grooming tools:
"Razor, 20,000 years ago, Asia and Africa....archaeologists have evidence that men shaved their faces as far back as twenty thousand years ago. Cave drawings clearly depict bearded and beardless men, and gravesites have yielded sharpened flints and shells that were the first razors. And as soon as man mastered working with iron and bronze, razors were hammered from these metals....
"Safety Razor: 1762, France....
"Electric Razor: 1931, United States....
"Soap: 600 B.C., Phoenicia....
"Shampoo: 1890s, Germany....
"Cosmetics: 8,000 Years Ago, Middle East....
"Hair Styling: 1500 B.C., Assyria....the Assyrians...were the first true hair stylists. Their skills at cutting, curling, layering, and dyeing hair were known throughout the Middle East as nonpareil. Their craft grew out of an obsession with hair....In 303 B.C., the first professional barbers, having formed into guilds, opened shops in Rome....
"Hair Dryer: 1920, [Racine] Wisconsin. The modern electric hair dryer was the offspring of two unrelated inventions, the vacuum cleaner and the blender.... [NB: "The New York Public Library Desk Reference...p. 102...first direct current electric motor dates to 1873, and the first commercial electric fan (a direct ancestor of the electric hair drier, one would think) to 1882. I could find no specific reference to electric hair dryers, but the same source dates the first electric toaster to 1893, so all the technological elements required for an electric-powered hair drier were in place by that date." (KF, 10 Sept. '99)]
"Comb: Pre-4000 B.C., Asia and Africa. The most primitive comb is thought to be the dried backbone of a large fish....the earliest man-made combs were discovered in six-thousand-year-old Egyptian tombs....Archaeologists claim that virtually all early cultures independently developed and made frequent use of combs--all, that is, except the Britons....these early peoples wore their hair unkempt (even during occupation by the Romans, themselves skilled barbers). They are believed to have adopted the comb only after the Danish invasions, in 789." Charles Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 214-38. (Also of interest: "Knife: 1.5 Million Years Ago, Africa and Asia"; and "Vacuum cleaner, 1901, England." Panati, pp. 80; 138.) ........