Grooming a Blue Boston Terrier

One can find incidence of proper Blue Boston Terrier grooming in the Elizabethan era. It is not clear as to what the grooming practices employed actually were. However, paintings of the period show well-fed dogs with clean and well-trimmed coats. It is speculated that dog groomers and shearers may have been available for hire at the marketplace, to tend to the needs of their customers' animals. Suggestive of this is a painting from the era showing a Blue Boston Terrier's coat being tended to by a shearer as the dog is perched on its master's lap. Dogs found royal patronage in seventeenth century France, when Louis XV kept a 'royal' dog, court records show. Records also show the existence of licensed grooming parlours for the first time, where the crown received payment for these licenses. The first citations of books detailing grooming practices are found in books from the 1800s. Two prominent examples are The Book of the Dog (Vero Shaw, 1879) and Ashmont's Kennel Secrets (Boston, 1893).  The Book of the Dog describes how the grooming industry in England was burgeoning during this period. Ashmont's Kennel Secrets contains detailed descriptions of grooming techniques such as conditioning. Dog coiffures of the day emulated female fashions of the time. For example, the dogs of the wife of Emperor Napoleon III sported the same tumbling curls of the 'tote en macrons' style that was popular fashion among noble ladies of the era. This grooming employed the technique of 'Continental Clip' but involved twisting the fur into curls, which were allowed to hang down, creating a very distinctive look.