The Staging Method of Stripping
Part Two

SECOND STAGE

Two to two-and-a-half weeks from the day you marked on your calendar

This second stage consists of removing all the long unstripped hair you left on the dog when you did the First Stage! Now how about that!
To elaborate, you will now strip out the skull, ears, throat, neck, brisket, shoulders and the withers (if you decided to leave that on). Don't forget his little "fuzzy fanny" part!

At this time you will do more shaping on the foreface (muzzle), and his furnishings.As you do the skull you will notice that the eyebrow-half you previously stripped is already starting to grow in a bit and as you now remove the second-half (that part over the OUTSIDE corner of the eye), you will see the line of the eyebrow is forming almost by itself. All it takes is a tiny of blending to achieve the proper eyebrow.

DE-FUZZING


As you are doing ("doing" means stripping) the second stage on your dog, you will notice that the stripped parts of the first stage have now grown a covering of fuzzy undercoat. THIS MUST BE REMOVED. ATTENTION: ROTATING COAT people, as well as STAGED COAT people . . . to prepare the dog for a Rotating Coat, we have stripped the dog "out" in one day. Remember, the whole of our dog! Therefore, in 2 to 2 1/2 weeks, the whole dog is covered with this layer of fuzzy undercoat. We strip the whole dog again, removing the "fuzz". This is known as "DE-FUZZING". Whether "Staging" or "Rotating", when you strip a dog completely OUT, he will grow "fuzz" to protection. With the STAGED COAT, 2 to 2 ½ weeks have already passed before we do the second stage, so the first-stage parts are ready for de-fuzzing. We do NOT wait until the mood suits us! We de-fuzz NOW, while we are doing the second stage.

The second stage is de-fuzzed from one to two weeks later. Your eye should tell you when the fuzz is long enough to pull. We de-fuzz with a fine stripping knife (or with our fingers, if you haven't graduated to the knives yet). I go over the dog with my block chalk, the wrong way of the hair first. This makes the fuzz stand on end, and also gives some body to these ultra-fine hairs, making them easier to grasp and pull. Should there be any HARD coat just breaking through, having the longer "fuzz" lifted well up will prevent you from pulling or damaging this hard coat. If you do not de-fuzz before the hard coat gets in (it's alright if it's just through), the hard hair is literally choked by the undercoat. DO NOT be misled into thinking this "fuzz" will go away by itself . . . IT WON'T, and in attempting to remove it, you are going to pull out most of your hard coat as well. With some dogs you may find it necessary to "de-fuzz" two or even three times before the fresh hard coat comes in. I cannot stress too strongly the importance of de-fuzzing at the proper time! You may wind up as I did once . . . just as my dog should have been ready to enter the show ring, I found myself having to strip him out and start all over again..(illustration-three).


HINTS ON STAGING THE COAT

By now I hope you have realized that one part of your dog's coat is 2 ½ weeks ahead of the other part. So, if our finished product is going to present a symmetrical appearance, instead of a series of stair steps, we should do some pre-blending. We do this by "thinning" the hair a bit where the long unstripped hair of the second stage meets the relative to baldness of the first stage, AND we do this as we are doing the first stage. DON'T get carried away with this thinning! Our aim is to have a scattering of longer hairs where the two edges meet.

We sometimes find that the neck of a young, immature dog will "fall away" slightly where it joins the withers. If the youngster has well-pronounced withers, this be an unsightly dip. If you will leave the hair on the withers for the second stage, but pull the hair where this "did" occurs (on the first stage) you will achieve a nice, unbroken neck line, down through the withers.

Many young dogs are slightly "soft-backed" (this means they "fall away", another term, meaning they have a dip in their back). This dip occurs in back of the withers, and in front of the loin. It generally corrects itself by the time the youngster is over a year-old, and in this youngster, it is usually accentuated by a "roll" of puppy fat across the loin, and added to the natural thickness of the hair in the loin area. NO! We do NOT pull a hole in the middle of his back! What we DO is work down the extra-thick hair over the loin, by thinning, when the fresh, hard hair is long enough to be workable. If this does not straighten his topline, then he "falls away" too darned much . . . a serious fault!

We may also find that our youngster possesses more "Stop" than we could wish for. This detracts from his nice, level-head profile. In case you have forgotten, the "Stop" is the indentation, slight in the Fox Terrier, where the bridge of the nose joins the skull . . . between the eyes. Again, we rely upon our first stage, and when shaping the foreface (muzzle), we will pull the hair from BETWEEN the eyes. This is one of the few times we pull the wrong way of the hair, as we want this hair to "stand up". We will blend this hair into the line of the top of the skull (frontal bones) when we do the second stage. GOOD LUCK on your STAGING AND DE-FUZZING!!