Front legs and Furnishings
Part Two

We have now taken the front of the forearm down nice and close, and we do the same to the side of the front of the forearm, hereafter known as the front side. We are now standing in front of our dog to see our "line", but we step to the side of our dog to trim this line. By the way, the hair of the furnishings should always be pulled using a downward motion.
We now come to the elbow, and we are going to trim the side and "point" at the same time.

Trimming the point of the elbow involves holding your dog's foreleg, below the upper front forearm, and pulling it out, away from the body, while you twist it SLIGHTLY so that the point of the elbow is looking at you. You must stand well in back of your dog's shoulder, and face the same way he is. If you stand your dog at a bit of an angle (from the left side of the dog, his forelegs towards the right edge of the table, his hindquarters towards the left edge) it helps. Some dogs have more mobility than others. If your dog's legs don't want to bend that way, you are just going to have to crawl around between them in order to trim in these places, and the more upright in shoulder, the less mobility as a rule. It is an unfortunate fact that the majority of Wires are upright in shoulder. Some to a lesser degree, and some to a greater! This will give us trouble in attaining the correct look through the brisket and forearm area, but will lend a lovely illusion in other areas.

At this time we will trim the point and side of the elbow quite close. If our dog is long in body, we may want a greater wealth of furnishings to shorten him up, but first let's get the proper shape to them.

The side of the elbow should be trimmed so that it has a very faint "tucked in" appearance, from the SIDE only...VERY FAINT. This is when the dog is standing still, because when he is moving, we don't want this hair making him look like he is out at his elbows. AND, we are attempting to give the legs a rounded, or columnar look. The legs are not rectangular!

Now is the time to practice and experiment. Your dog is not going to a show this weekend, so be brave! Always remember to trim a bit, then stand back and see how the overall affect is coming. Be sure when you are doing furnishings to move your dog occasionally on lead, to see how your trimming is effecting his movement. If you do not have someone to move him for you, put him in the run, or anywhere that he will exercise and you can get a good view. When you're dog is on the table, take time to step back... I mean back away from him, in order see the overall effect of what you've done.

In preceding chapters I have described various methods of pulling hair. If you’re working on his furnishings with thumb and forefinger, try using some of the methods of pulling I described for the head. Experiment until you feel you have adopted the method best suited to your position and the area you are working on. If you are using stripping knives, which one does this particular area best? Be sure and use a very LIGHT touch on these furnishings. You are molding, NOT ripping the hair out! By now you should be able to regulate pressure of thumb and forefinger, and you should definitely have gotten a feel for the hair! If not, you are relying too much on the written word and you need a push "out of the nest". Having "shaped up" the upper forearm, we will now take a plunge all the way down to the feet, although this leaves the hair between the upper forearm and the feet untrimmed, and looking pretty silly. I am sure you are all familiar with the saying "children should be seen and not heard". Well, one might say Wire feet should be heard and not seen! If you can hear them distinctly, their nails need trimming! So the very first step is trimming the nails. If the nails are already quite short, file them back until just before reaching the "quick". We don't want bleeding, unless absolutely necessary; that is, when the nails have ignored too long. As long as you have the nippers and file out, might was well do all four feet. Nails all neat? Fine!

We will now trim around the bottom of the feet, and in between the pads, with SCISSORS. We do this trimming by taking the dog's foot in our hand and bending it back at the "wrist". So that we are gazing at the bottom of the foot. The dog's foot is a variation on the themeof the human hand. He walks on his toes, which structurally are our fingertips. However, we are here to trim, not to draw comparisons, so look at the diagrams of the foot so you will know what I am talking about. Trim all the hair out from between the Plantar ball and the Digital balls. DO NOT trim between the individual Digital ball, or, DO NOT TRIM BETWEEN HIS TOES! DO trim the long, unsightly hair from AROUND, not between, the Digital balls. Trim the hair on the edge of the back of the Plantar ball, where the ball joins the skin of the pastern (see diagrams). DO NOT trim too far up! You are just neatening the foot. The object is to remove all the long, bunchy hair from between the Plantar and Digital balls, and from around the bottom edges of these so that the foot presents a clean, neat appearance. Also, great gobs of hair in this area will spread your dog's feet, and it is supposed to be COMPACT!!