Now with a very young dog like this, it’s always best to start off by hand stripping from the back to the front. This if you got a particular a low feet Airedale there, this will then insure there that the tummy gets to the top there he’s tired and you can do more detail on the head. We’ll start by hand stripping from the back of the dog, LaMar’s 329. I’ve also got a thumb stole on my thumb which helps to grip the coat. If you haven’t got a thumb stole, what you can use here is air chalk or ear powder and just sprinkle it all over the dog anything that you can grip a hold of the coat to pull. And the action is there--is to put a little time, you grab and pull, grab and pull.

You do this all the way over, up to as far as the neck and run your fingers through the coat, just brush the coat up the wrong way. You can see the coat standing up, hold the coat again and pull. And with your pin brush, brush the coat down. You’ve got a nice even--looking back. And you’re down, down to nearly down to the skin. The same with the back here to emphasize the bend of stifle, you comb up the hair the wrong way, you just put it down with your finger and thumb again as close as you can at the back. You blend it all in, you brush it down with your pin brush and that emphasizes the bend of stifle. Pull the coat as you go as close as you can in, back side here and then with your thinning scissors, you just trim around, just brush around again.

Now we come to the most difficult part of trimming any Airedale there, it’s around the neck. As you can see the hair grow in many directions, it goes back, it goes forward, goes everywhere, so we go to the LaMars 326 and this is what we do with the neck and the shoulders with. So I’m holding the dogs head up like this, with your thumbs stole doing it again. So with the dogs head up, pulling the coat in the direction it goes. This is a very, very time consuming place, this is. A helpful tip here is to measure from there a two-inch line from here to here. These two inches of hair from here to here and trim that down as close as you can but leave this gap here, there and I’ll explain to you that in a very few minutes.