Noelle's Special Day

For a little while now, we've been thinking we really should get around to some of Noelle's grooming needs:

• giving her a bath (preferably not on a really cold day so she won't freeze when she has to go out)
  
• taking the time (lots of time) to comb/brush her ears that are so matted up
• probably trim the hair on her ears so it is neater and less likely to get all matted (none of us are trained pet barbers, but we can do the basic ear trimming relatively well...provided the dog is cooperative)

• trimming her nails (we almost always cut at least one just a little too short and don't always notice immediately, which means we have to clean up the carpet wherever she's been since it started bleeding....)

Different ones of us specialize in the different areas of her grooming, but we keep not having the time or patience to do it just now, or we're sick and just not up to it, and all that.  We're basically capable of doing what needs done, but the short version is simply that we keep putting it off.

Anyway, today we decided to take her in and get her groomed.  It was time.  After all, she is five years old and had never had the experience.  (The poor, deprived dog....)

I'm sorry, but I don't seem to really have a good "Before" picture for you with the long hair on her ears and them all tangled and matted up.

Here, however, are some "After" pictures.  This is what she looked like when she got home.  She came home wearing a bow and a bandanna.  (She was not being very cooperative with the camera tonight.)

No, I wouldn't call this a wonderful picture, but I think it was the one that best displayed her bandanna.

This one sort of does look posed.  It wasn't.

 

A little bit blurry....

 

HollyBeth was so kind as to help hold her relatively still.  I guess the photograph also shows her petite size.

I used the flash so the lighting is a bit interesting on this one.  (I really don't know why I'm posting all of these pictures of my dog...but I am....Well, you do keep asking for more pictures....Do pictures of the dog count?)  :-)

I'm not sure whether this is her royal pose, or a pose displaying her stubbornness....   :-)

This picture is from the evening that we got her, nearly five years ago.

She weighed about 3.5 pounds!

Now, all at once - "Oh, she's soooo cute!" 
Of course she is!  Didn't we already know that?!  After all, I think that's how she won her way so thoroughly into Mom's heart 5 years ago.  :-)

....5 people years or more than 30 dog years later....
(her birthday, for those wondering, is October 1st, 2004)

She's now reached a whopping 10 pounds, and her majesty is still quite the lap dog.