Maintenance banding your poodle

• use wrapping bands for standard poodles and standard size bands for toy and miniature poodles (this sounds confusing but that is the name of the sizes on the website www.laineeltd.com )
• never brush a poodle dry, I like a spray bottle with 8 pumps of Plush Puppy Protein Balm and the rest water in a Tybrushe Continuous Spray Bottle available at www.tybrushe.com
• you don't want the dog wet, a light mist will do
• from the front of the dogs head to the front corner of the ear, the hair is parted from the front corner of the ear to the front corner of the opposite ear
• make sure the part is as straight as possible and no little hairs are across the part, this helps prevent matting
• divide the hair from the front of the head to this part at the front corner of the ear approximately in half across the skull again making sure the part is straight and no hairs are criss crossing across this line
• comb the hair to be sure it is tangle free
• take your band and wrap it around the hair 3 times, less is too loose and wrapping the band around the hair more than 3 times and there is a greater risk of the hair being damaged, remember to not have the band too close to the skull
• be sure the band is not pulling at the eyes or anywhere else
• remember this is a maintenance topknot things would be different if this was show banding
• repeat the process on the second section of her which is from the first section to the front corner of the year, remember it is always better to have a bit of topknot hair going into the ear than ear hair into the topknot. Poodles usually hate when their ear hair is pulled
• band these two sections of hair together, the band still goes around 3 times and try to be sure the bands are equal distance apart as you band to the top of the length of hair
• when banding the ear beside that you have only ear hair
• always err on the side of having topknot hair in the ear and not er hair in the topknot
• ear hair in the topknot will drive your poodle crazy and cause scratching and matting