Back to grooming

Well it's grooming time again! I wanted to talk about drying. However I feel you should go to Pet Grooming the Good the Bad the Furry blog for everything on this! And much more wonderfully amazing things from her! I have a problem with just paying the bathers to wash and dry my dogs because it strains my back. They get them impeccably clean, but they all started less than a month ago and are still learning about drying. I completely understand this. I feel like I had the hardest time really getting them dry for like 6 months! I am going to try to dry my own dogs more. After all I'm still perfecting my technique! I promise I'll try. I don't want to be lazy. Really. :) On anothe note, I got my favorite pair of shears (the only pair I use) sharpened for the first time in a year. I was COMPLETElY amazed. I like groomig again! So much faster when you don't have to keep brushing and scissoring because your blunt shears are pushing the hair out of your scissors! Amazing concept, I know. As one girl in my saline oils say "cool story,bro."

Christian Dress Part 2

Please excuse my bad spelling and grammatical errors on my last post. I was typing in a super hurry on my Iphone. I thought it would fix them automatically but it did not.

Well onto my second part. :)

In the biblical times, men did not wear pants. No one wore pants.  Here is an excerpt from something I was reading about this.

"The men and women would wear an inner garment or shirt next to their skin called a tunic. Usually this was without sleeves and reached down to the knees or sometimes all the way to the ankles. Wealthy people would wear tunics which had sleeves and which reached to the ankles.

Among the poorer people, the tunic was often the only clothing worn in warm weather. Wealthier people might wear the tunic alone inside the house, but they would not wear it without the outer garment outside the house. In the Bible the term "naked" is sometimes used of men who only have their tunic on (see John 21:7). To be dressed in such a scanty manner was thought of as "nakedness."
This is from middletownbiblechurch.org.

So what was the Bible referring to when it said that women should dress like women and men should dress like men?

"Men and women wore the same kind of clothing, but it differed in detail. They both would wear an inner garment and a girdle and an outer garment, but the dress of the woman was more elaborate and ornamented. However, the women wore longer tunics and larger mantles than the men. Also the women would often wear a veil covering their face.
Even though men and women wore the same kind of clothes, there were differences which made it easy to tell the sexes apart. Even today men and women both wear shirts, but usually the blouse that a woman would wear is quite different than the shirt that a man would wear."
Again from middletownbiblechurch.org

So in my opinion (and you may have a different one-and that is okay ), the bible is referring to what the customs of the day are. In that time, wearing the kind of robe a man would wear, even though women ALSO wore robes, was considered dressing like a man.

It is now culturally acceptable to wear pants for men and women. So this should be in line with the Bible, correct?

Who is to say? Who really knows? You can type anything about modest dress and what christians should wear on the internet and get 28372038 different views.

You must look into your heart and talk to God about what is best for you. Again these are MY opinions.

I feel that I cannot wear pants in a way that is modest. I feel they always always always draw attention to parts that are only for my husband. I also feel that if they are not below my knee that I might as well wear a miniskirt. This probably makes no sense, but hey. Makes sense in my mind. :)

I am not some "crazy religious person" or anything. All of my life I have worn pants and shorts and tight shirts. I just recently changed the way I dress. I am talking to you as someone that sees both sides.

We as christians are not supposed to draw attention to ourselves. After all, it's not about us. It's about GOD. We must look at everything we do and wear and say and behave and EVERYTHING. Ask yourself. Just once. Is this something I am doing for me? For my gain? Am I trying to draw unneccesary attention to myself by wearing shirts that show my cleavage? By the things I talk about? How loudly I talk about these things?

I'm not telling you how to dress or behave . I'm just trying to help you out.

I feel that if something is getting in the way of my relationship with God, then I need to fix it. God does not want men looking at the parts of my body he designed for my husbands enjoyment. God does not want me telling people (even jokingly) things about my husband or marriage if it  makes him look bad.

With all the things I've been talking about here is one of the MOST important things.

Our works do NOT define our faith. Like how much we have. We can not earn God's love. We already have it. God will not love us more if we follow a bunch of rules. God will not love us less. Ever. If you want to hear some good stuff about that subject (which I could go on and on about) you can listen, watch, or download in an mp3 this sermon about the parable of the workers in the vineyard from my church.

http://www.springcreekchurch.org/series2012/i_current_series.html

I recommend reading the bible yourself and talking to God yourself. I had so many perceptions change about the way I should behave and present myself after reading the bible.

I feel like my thoughts have been a little helter-skelter here but I hope you have kept up with my thought processing. :)  I hope I haven't forgotten about anything I had planned to post.

One more thing.

I feel that it is not anyones right to judge or condemn ANYONE for what they do or not do. With the exception of God.

I have been following a blog by a christian women. She has a lot of wonderful things going for her and is very joyful and I love it!

The only thing is- whenever she posts about modesty is EXTREMELY judgemental about christians. She actually calls them "so-called christian women" when she is refering to women that wear pants! Dont get me wrong, she is very in line with the bible about many things she talks about and I very much enjoy her blog. I just never think it's right to judge people like that. We all have sins and things that we struggle with. No one has the right to tell anyone how to be or that they are not a christian. I am guilty of bad thoughts, speaking harshly, being quick to anger and many things as many of us are. But we are born-again and have been redeemed. Jesus died for our sins. Of course that is not an excuse to sin.

Boy I got of subject.

Well I hope this was enlighting and not to off-subject for you!

Have a good week everyone!

Christian dress

I have been struggling lately with how I should present myself as a Christian wife. The church I go to is nondenominational and have no restrictions or suggestions on dress. However I have seen women wear booty shorts to church. I have always felt since a young age that your dress should not change wether you are in church or not. I know of churches that say "wear a dress or skirt to church" and they can wear pants outside. I feel personally that whatever I am convicted to wear or do I should do in and out of church. God sees me all the time, not just when I'm in his house With that said for about a month I have been wearing skirts all the time and have begun to alter my tops in a way that I feel is more modest. Mostly this is because I don't want to cause my brothers in Christ to stumble. I feel of I wear a skirt I behave a little better and that no one is looking at the hip and thigh area pants draw attention to. I was also not wearing makeup. Upon readings I har decided I am okay with this if it is not heavy and extreme. And around my hisband because he is fine with tat and enjoys my enhanced face. The only problems I have had with my husband in 2 years of marriage has constantly been wearing makeup to work. He feels I am making myself up do someone other than him when I do this. Ultimately my husband is my head and God is his head. It is a chain of command. . I will post more later.

Lamb cuts

I did a lamb cut today.

For some reason I don't do them very often. My salon is very particular about the way dogs are groomed.

Each time the dog is groomed, we write the exact blades, combs, etc we used for the groom from head to tail. If the sticky note says "like before" then we must do what was done before. I would like to leave legs a little longer on short trims so that the dog has fuller legs rather than little stick legs.

But anyways...

 

It's not that big of a difference, but you can tell by the way the coat on the legs looks thicker than the body.

This is done because the she has thin hair and the owner doesn't like the stick leg look.

 

This is her sweet face. She was wonderful for her groom.

Sorry for blurry pics again.

I will try to be better. :)

Bathing your dog

Always some interesting people to meet when you're a groomer.

Today the owner (who also is the receptionist) came back to tell us all some delightful information. Earlier in the day we had talked about people that don't brush their dogs, and how people think their dogs don't need to be brushed, have dental cleanings, etc, because they "didn't in the wild." Obviously that's a conversation for another day.

But anywho...

A first time customer came to pick up her lab mix thing that came to us for a bath and nails. Before she left she was talking about her dog to the shop owner. As she walked out the door she commented that this dog was the first she had ever owned that "needed" a bath.

???

We all got a pretty good laugh out of it and pondered how many dogs she had owned and how smelly they all were. :(

So this brought me to my post about bathing your dog.

Your dog needs baths. In the 1600s or whatever time period you would like to think of when "dogs weren't bathed very often" you must also remember that PEOPLE did not bathe very often. No that does not mean that your dog needs a bath whenever you have one, but it is okay to do more often than you would think.

I once worked at a shop that would tell people that under NO circumstances should they wash their dog more than every 3 weeks because it would dry out the coat. This is incorrect.

 Show dogs are bathed A LOT, some even daily. They use mild shampoos and conditioner (very important). When you use shampoo on your dog, you strip the natural oils from the coat. This is not bad as they DO come back. Depending on the dog (because of oily coat, dry, quality of food), the time it takes to replenish the oils varies from several days to several weeks. To help put the oils back into the coat, conditioner is used. This, among other things, is how show dogs maintain amazing coats.

Hooray important things are done.

On another note, I bathed a friends dog today at her house. It was the first time I've ever done an in-home grooming. We had no table or restraint system. Just a dining room floor and my friend holding her dog. It was interesting considering Sampson is quite particular about what he will let you do without a fight.

I took a few pictures but he was clean and pretty and prancing around and wouldn't be still. This is the best I could get. :)

I know-it's super blurry. But he has such a sweet face. :D

Getting into blogging

I have been reading a lot of blogs lately and have catched the blogging bug. I doubt anyone will follow, but if you do, I hope this will be enlighting for you. I plan to mostly talk about grooming, but anything goes! Whatever is on my mind. And I'm long winded-so beware! Happy blogging!