Notes from the Corporate World

I've been so busy editing, that I haven't had a chance to write anything about our dogs!

Well - here is what I've learned through the remaining videos:

1 - Old English Sheep Dogs are born without a tail. What? For reals.


2 - It's possible to prevent your dog from shedding as much. A groomer can actually de-shed your dog so that when you bring it home, your pants, couch and sweatshirts no longer have to serve as a lint brush.



3 - One of the most popular trims for one of the smallest dogs - the pomeranian, is a lion trim. Irony?



4 - The Bedlington Terrier, is one of the most difficult dogs to groom. I for one, think they look like mini dinosaurs.



5 - Non sequitur of the day - How cute is that? I mean really...



6 - The Wheaton Terrier is actually supposed to have a crazy amount of facial hair. i think it actually makes them look like Mark Twain.





7 - The Doberman that we groomed thinks he's a poodle. How's that for feared predator. Awesome!



8 - For wrinkly breeds, you have to clean their wrinkles daily to keep them dry or they can get crazy infections. Gross.



9 - This beagle is hilarious. Doesn't he look mad about something?



10 - every time your dog gets wet, you have to brush it out or it'll develop mats. be careful, or it could turn into this....ew.



11 - It is believed that Bulldogs come from an ancient fierce mastiff type breed that would compete with Bulls and hunt wild boars. What? Cupid's a lover not a fighter.



12 - Labrador Retrievers are the most popular breed of dog in the world and (by a large margin) the most popular in America. For the record, the dog in our log is not a lab. He's a Rhodesian Ridgeback, how's that for random



13 - Wheatons are Irish; Labs are from Newfoundland Canada; Pomeranians are Polish, Pugs are Chinese, Dobermans & Poodles are
German; Beagles & Bedlingtons are English, - talk about the United Colors of Benetton!

UNCANNY!

Anubis is Jenny Dog!

Notes from the Corporate World

Things you may not have known about the Poodle Pom Pom Trim aka The Continental trim

I'm a poodle lover. I can put up with their neurotic behavior and weird quirks because 1- if they had a voice box, they'd probably be more eloquent than me and 2 - they don't shed or smell! love that!
But something needs to be said - The Continental Trim is ridiculous. In fact, I think it gives poodles a bad name. I mean when you see a poodle in a lazy lamb/puppy cut - UGH! YOU NEED TO SMOOSH AND CUDDLE AND KISS!


This one......leaves me with questions.


However, there is no denying that this is the king of show trims. So when Jay and Sue said they wanted to start a show trim line, we knew which video would be or first. I figured that I would stifle my
giggles and by best Elvis impression, and just get down to filming. Through the course of the day, I actually learned a lot, and figured I would pass these tidbits on to you. Maybe it'll help you from judging the poor poodle under the bouffant. Maybe not.

Here are the top five things you might not have known about the
Continental Trim:

1. It started as a functional trim. Poodles are water dogs. In fact, Pudel is german for "splashes in water." What?! German not French. Surely you lie! See. You're learning lots of poodle facts today. Back
to the point - when the poodles would go out hunting with their owners, their hair would get in the way. Solution...shave them down! But how do you protect their organs and joints? Leave areas unshaved. So the pom poms on the back were to protect the kidneys and hips. The "jacket" protected the heart and lungs and the socks protected the
ankle joints. I'm all for function. I love big ugly parkas in winter.


2. The reason the cut got so huge and ridiculous was all for fashion. This also makes perfect sense to me. We see this all the time. Let's bring back the ridiculous fad of 80s shoulder pads. People get on board, and then someone has to make it look like Mickey Mouse. I reference the below.


3. It takes 3+ hours to cut this hair cut. And that's not even accounting for the bath and blow dry. So you're looking at a solid 6 hours to do this. What? That's half the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 6 Hours?! That's a flight from Boston to London. Six hours? That is determination. Jenny, our poodle demo, took us close to 4 hours from start to finish. You're not done though...After the show is over, you have to wash out the hairspray, so that it doesn't destroy the coat. Imagine leaving hairspray in your hair after the prom. Your hair would get matted and your scalp would break out. I.e. super grossness. So add another wash and try - and you're looking at a solid day of work for only 10 minutes in the show ring. This is dedication and deserves a I <3 poodle t-shirt just for trying.


4. The fact that you can use hairspray on a dog warrants it's on bullet point. I mean, I could've styled my pet dog, Jones' hair as opposed to all my barbies. Wouldn't my mom have been thrilled! And,
you don't even need to buy special hair spray. I could've gone right into my mom's cabinet and been good to go with her Paul Mitchell or Shiseido - that stuff HELD! No, for real. Sue uses all sorts of human hair products on her poodles: combs, elastics, and scrunchies. Current hairspray of choice - Big Sexy Hair! I love that Jenny is wearing more hairspray than Melissa would ever wear in her life!


5.My last bit of trivia comes from the world of Art History, which I love. Poodles have been portrayed wearing the Continental Trim in paintings, etchings and other artifacts dating as far back as 1533.
That's a long time. At the time - the printing press was only 83 years old and the Mona Lisa? only 29.


So, Jenny, you rock on with that Continental Trim! - Leesh

Super Styling Sessions Styles Again!

On December 29th and 30th, I ventured to Sue Zecco's house in Oakham, Mass. It's been three weeks since we postponed our first shoot due to the terrible ice storm. I thought that everything would be back to normal. Gosh it had bee three weeks and she doesn't live off the grid in Alaska somewhere. I was wrong. Trees and branches were still down along the streets from Worcester to Oakham. I have never seen anything like it. Sue had a tree fall down on the roof of her shop, and is still in repairs. All in all they were without power for 10 days. It was 2008 right? Not 1908? Geesh. I don't mean to knock my homeland, but Come On People!


With heat renewed, we rose above and shot 8 videos in two days. Since Jay tore his rotator cuff a few weeks prior, Sue had to do all the heavy lifting herself. And boy, did she rise to the occasion. We did one video illustrating how to work with difficult dogs, and she wrestled with a miniature poodle that was out for blood. This woman is my hero! Jay is no joke either. He clipped Sue's dog Trace, a Standard Poodle who is only slightly smaller than my boy - Atticus (Kong), while his arm was on fire. The clip lasted two hours, and he never complained once. I, on the other hand, was getting sore just standing around. Hero I am not. Both Sue and Jay gave me even more respect for their craft.


All in all - we shoot 7 new Super Styling Sessions videos - The German Trim (for Poodles), The "Doodle," Difficult but not Impossible Pet Grooming (featuring our first Cat!), The Airedale, Hand Strip and Carding Techniques (part of the technical series), Competition Grooming and How to Open Your Own Business.

In addition to these seven, we also shot one video for Wahl Clipper Corporation - The Fundamentals and Essentials of Tech Grooming. This DVD will be sent out with all of Wahl's Clippers as an instructional guide on how to groom a pet. It was an amazing opportunity for us, and I'm very grateful to Jay and Sue for this break.

Check back soon to learn more about how the editing process. I'll be up to my neck in dogs for the next couple of months! A great place to be.

What I Learned About Terriers

Um...did you know that Terriers are supposed to be hand-stripped? Meaning that, by hand, you pull out their hair instead of using a clipper or scissors. Meaning, you sit for hours and pull the hair out
of a dog, and it keeps coming and coming. And if you don't hand-strip, the hair changes texture and even color?! And the dogs don't mind it (some may not love it - but it's not painful).

The hair is dead and it's got to go. Apparently - these hairs will grow to a hard wire point, but the middle of the shaft is hollow and it has a very soft base, allowing it to be pulled out easily. They just sit there as Sue pulls away creating a huge mountain that would send my sister into an allergic coma. I, luckily, am not allergic to any animal - which is good cause there are only a few foods that I can be friends with.

Anyway, back to Terriers. So this hand-stripping has to be done with a dirty coat. And if the coat isn't dirty enough, the groomer adds chalk to it. CHALK! To make it dirty. So....more dust in the air.
More bad news for allergy sufferers. The goal of hand-stripping is that you pull the hair out and allow the dog's true wiry coat to grow in properly.

You can hand-strip any part of the dog's coat although there are certain parts of the coat that are more sensitive than others. Think about it - clearly the belly and the face. For sure, I'd have a problem if Sue came at me with a comb and said she was going to strip my hair. Sue, being a gentler soul, has decided that for most pets, she will do a mixture of the stripping and clipping.

These aren't competition dogs. She wants the dog to be as close to breed standard as possible, but she doesn't want to put the dog or herself through any unnecessary pain. So, she uses scissors on the tail and on
certain dogs that are more sensitive.

Can you imagine? I thought waxing was rough!

Sue has had carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists.

you can find out more information at - www.harborside.com

Super Styling Shoot Canceled!

This blog entry is in response to a blog that we posted last week about Super Styling Sessions. While, yes, it is true that we were meant to be shooting dogs (as in video taping them) this past weekend; we were forced to cancel the taping! Apparently, central Massachusetts was so inundated with freezing rain that it was put into a state of emergency. The roof of Sue Zecco’s shop, The Pampered Pet, was severely damaged due to the storm and much of the area was without electricity for the majority of the weekend. Not surprisingly, everybody involved decided that it would be the smartest move to postpone the shoot so that Sue could put all of her attention on her shop and her home.
We hope everyone affected by the storm is coming out of the brutal weekend okay!

Super Styling Sessions Styles Again!

This weekend Alicia and Julie from On the Leesh are headed to Massachusetts to shoot more videos for Super Styling Sessions with Sue Zecco and Jay Scruggs. These top notch, award-winning groomers will be shooting more videos for their grooming series. We've worked with Jay and Sue for a number of years now and each shoot is always a glorious, fabulous, adventure! Being the dog lovers we are, we always look foward to another shoot with these two animal experts. Stay tuned... more videos to come!

If you're interested in creating an industrial, informational or educational video, give On the Leesh a call and let us work our a package for you!

MY WEEKEND OF EDITING, BUDGETING AND SCHEDULING

On the Leesh has a very busy fall, our busiest yet. As they say in the
restaurant biz - "We're in the weeds." While other production
companies our size will work on one or two projects a year, we
currently have eleven open projects that are in one phase of
production or another.

We normally have this number of projects open, but what makes this
different is that six of our projects right now are in open production. This means cameras are rolling and computers are editing. We don't
get like this all the time, but right now and through December, we're
completely excited about all the work that is coming through our
office and we don't want to say no to any of it.

How does each
project get it's fair access of the On the Leesh spotlight? Well sometimes, I have to work weekends.

It's not so bad really - I give myself certain liberties when working
on weekends: I'm allowed to wear pajamas to work, I can eat ice cream for lunch and if I need to take a Broadcast News-Holly
Hunter-break, I allow myself to do so. All in all, it's not that bad. Come to think of it, I'm almost my own lifetime television for women reality
show. The only difference is people would be bored out of their mind
watching me sing to myself as I generate title cards on videos, or try
to figure out the nebulous cost of gas for a line item in a budget. I pride myself on my organizational abilities, so I do have that on my
side.

I've noticed recently though, that my dreams include all the characters I'm
editing. Holly from The In-Betweens of Holly Malone visits Johnnie from The Sexually and Bernice from In the Can Productions has cupcakes at Frannie's
house from For Belly. It's kind of interesting to see what will happen next with
them. Perhaps we have a whole new season right there. A sort of cross
over, Buffy/Angel kind of thing.

Oh no, I just made it twelve projects!

More updates as I go along...

K-9 GROOMING SECRETS

A couple of weeks ago, Melissa and I headed down to Memphis, Tennessee
with Sue Zecco to meet up with her grooming partner, Jay Scruggs. Jay
offered his home as a location for our latest collaboration. On
August 9th, we pulled ourselves away from the gorgeous town of
Collierville, away from the delicious aromas of Corky's ribs and away
from our day dreams of Elvis. We hunkered down and got to work. We
shot two videos for the pet owner. One uses a Golden Retriever, and
the other uses a Maltese and a Bichon to illustrate how a pet lover
should care for his/her large or small breed dog at home between
grooming appointments.



We've been working with Jay and Sue for two years, and we have
produced, directed, shot and edited over 15 videos for them. Until
now, their techniques have only been available to professional
groomers. We're all very excited that this DVD will expand our market,
and bring their "Grooming Secrets" to a much wider audience.




I, for one, learned dozens of useful information while working on these
videos. For one, I've been brushing Atticus and Scout incorrectly. I
never knew not to brush a dry coat. I also learned to brush my dogs
before I give them a bath to reduce matting and make it easier on them
during their final brush out. And most importantly, I learned that my
Kerastase is not good on poodles or any breed for that matter. While
it might make my hair shiny and strong, the pH messes with their skin
and can cause irritations and discomfort. Never a good thing!



Now, Atticus and Scout are going to get the royal treatment at home.
(If you were to ask them, it's no secret they prefer their visits to
Sue!)



To purchase this video, or to find out more information about grooming
your dog at home - visit www.k9secrets.com