My poor, poor little dog and her poor, poor fur.

Ever since she was a puppy, Ista has gone to see Lisa to get her haircuts. For awhile she got excited when we said the name, so we spelled out L-i-s-a. She would get nervous going in the door to the vet's but would settle right down if we would assure her, "You get to see Lisa! You're going to see Lisa!"

Lisa retired at the end of May. The vet wants to hire a new groomer to work on the premises, and I thoroughly approve of this plan, but they haven't found anyone yet. And Ista's curly, non-shedding poodle fur was getting really hard to brush out with the brambles and things she gets into. So I booked her in for an appointment at the Eagan PetSmart.

Oh lordy. Never, never again.

I have no idea whether the lighting and angle on any of the photos timprov tried to take will work out so that you can see evidence of the bad, bad haircut. Her body is fine. Legs, tail: fine. We told them "puppy cut," which is poodle owner for "do not give my dog stupid puffballs, as she is not hunting game in the underbrush." They got that part. But her poor head. It was a dome of poofy poodle fur framed with two mesh puffballs in sparkly green and pink. It was the most awful thing ever. She was like the special Muppet guest for a B52s concert. It was really, really bad. Timprov and I laughed all the way home, because we are not nice people.

Now she has a different bad haircut, the one where it looks like her incompetent owner went after her with a scissor. But I cannot wait until the vet gets a new groomer. (And she really isn't going back there--they splintered a couple of her nails, and I had to fix them pretty carefully to keep them from ripping back and hurting her.)