Master the Teddy Bear Face: Pro Groomer’s Step-By-Step Tutorial!

So today I'm going to demonstrate how to do a teddy bear face and the example that I'm using is my client who is named Rosie. She is a toy poodle but you can do this on any curly coated dog, poodle, doodle, it doesn't matter. So pick up those scissors and follow along. Okay the first step to any great face is going to be getting their eyes nice and clean. For this I do like to about the length of a 10 blade and that is the best for getting in between the eyes. I go towards the eyes just in the corners and then I come down to get that hair just from the corners and she has a lot of eye gunkies so this is very essential for her to keep her eyes very clean. And just scoop that out until basically you're happy with the whole thing and then you can move on to the next step. So because Rosie here gets a short haircut on her body due to a preference of her parents and just for their ease at home of maintenance I'm going over her head with a half an inch comb and the reason I'm doing this is because it's just going to get the bulk off and it's just going to be easier to actually kind of sculpt in the shape I want instead of trying to remove all that bulk first. It's just a nice easy way to get a length that works for her body and then I'll go in and sculpt the edges of it afterwards. So now I'm going to pull everything forward here and then I'm going to trim up around her eyes. This just gets that area nice and short as we talked about earlier. So when you do this you want to use your scissor pull everything forward over her eyes and then create a nice rounded line going from the corners of her eyes and her cheeks there up over her head to the other side. So you can see I'm using a flat angle on the one side to create a more straight line on her cheek area and then going up over her eyes. So this creates kind of a nice rounded shape more of an I guess an oval than a circle. But doing this is going to create a great base for the shapes you're creating. So when you're creating a head haircut you're going off of shapes. So the shape of a teddy bear head is round. So now what I'm doing here is I am going to trim up her chin with the same length as her body. Again this is just going to make my life easier. We do not need the chin long. If you add bulk to the chin it's going to elongate that oval shape and make it less of a round circle. So teddy bears are pretty circular so you can see here what it looks like when you trim up the chin and you want to make a circular shape. So no long shapes. Don't leave that chin hair long. Take it nice and short. So now I'm trying to trim up her lips and this is a little bit difficult. She is a licker. She will immediately lick back in that hair. So you can see her doing it there. I usually like to use my clippers again with a 10 on it and I like to go over the edges of the lip to get it really nice and short. It adds a nice shape but she does not like that so I am going in with my scissors instead. So I am holding her mouth shut because as you can see she very much likes to lick. So I have to keep that mouth contained. I can get over my finger. I'm going to try again but it doesn't work so well. She really doesn't like the vibration. She barely likes it on her head or her body so I should have known that going in but she does not appreciate the clippers. So scissors it is for you little miss Rosie. And we are going to try and get that shape that we want which is the the round shape. So if you leave the mustache long it is the same concept. You are dragging down that face. Anything that you want to create in a round shape you want to trim it kind of on an upward angle right. So even here you see I have my curves out. This is because obviously curves create a rounded shape. So now I'm going over her muzzle. You can see the difference between one side and the other and I have trimmed off underneath that part I was saying that's going to drag it down and that's going to create the biggest effect out of all of this. Yes I trimmed on top but it's majority of that lip hair coming off the top of the muzzle to create a rounded shape. And there she's licking so much which makes it complicated. So be careful if your dog is a licker. So now moving on we are going to hold back her ear to see that line again because remember when I was trimming up the sides of her cheeks well I did not lift up her ears and she's going to have hair there so I need to pull all the hair up. So same thing I am going back in with the straights and this is to create a more straight line just on the side because if you leave too much bulk in the cheek area then a lot of the time it gets matted and she gets quite a short cut as well so blending can be difficult. If you have a dog with a longer haircut anything over half an inch I would suggest maybe not going in so straight and leaving it a bit more of a rounded shape but because she is a short haircut on the body that means that you want to take that area to blend in as well. So I am just trimming up in front so part of the issue is if you leave too much hair in the front of the muzzle so the stuff that kind of pulls out past the nose what's going to happen is it's going to create the effect of kind of heaviness in that area. You want that nice and short. So now I am just as I had mentioned when I was going over with the half an inch I am trimming up my edges. I am just refining it into a more of a rounded shape. So I am blending it back into her neck and getting from her ears up as well to create that round shape. See me going right over the top there round round round and I am using those curved scissors to create that rounded effect and it really helps if you have the correct scissors to go over the head with the ones that are going to create that shape. It's just a lot easier than trying to round a head with the straight scissors if you know what I'm saying. So again using them on the side here to blend in those cheeks into the side of her head and at the very end I am going to go in with a thinning shears and chunkers to kind of just get any of those harsh lines as well. You can see what I'm doing with the ears here. I am pulling it down and where I am stopping with my fingers so basically that is the edge of the ear so that way I am making sure to not cut the edge of the ear because anything that I am cutting below my finger does not have any of the ear flap in it and that is just how you can easily do a dog ear any any style without cutting the ear. People who just freestyle it they really scare me I'll tell you that much. I like to feel I like to know that I am not going to be cutting off any skin with my my hacks away there. So an important part of the teddy bear look too is kind of a nice rounded ear so I like to take it off make those little bell kind of shapes at the end and as I talked about earlier too I'm going over the face with those thinning shears to just try and round out those edges. Isn't she cute? She's so cute I can't get over her every time I'm looking at it I'm like oh my god you're so cute and you can use yeah the thinning shears as you can see there to blend it in and that's really the whole concept it's creating those round shapes anything that's left too long like the chin or the muzzle or the cheeks are really just going to drag down that face and not create that rounded shape that we were talking about. It's really important to actually take a step back and take a look at your shapes. What shapes are you creating? So sometimes when I see online people asking questions about how to do a better face a lot of the times if you just draw simple shapes of what you're trying to create over top of their picture you can get a better idea of what needs to be trimmed and a lot of the time it's going to be that chin hair it's going to be that muzzle hair and sometimes around the eyes too but you want a really nice clean eyes. Teddy bears have those cute sparkly eyes so clear out a lot of that that hair from the top so that you are able to see the eyes really well really give it that sparkling quality. I will say that a good finish so getting the coat as straight as possible in your drying process is going to help you substantially but Rosie here does not love her face dried so it can be a bit complicated for her so I completely get that I totally understand it can be a difficult process for some and it can be challenging to really get it straight and but the straighter you get it the better your finish is going to be and here she is look at that face she's so cute!