What happens when you shave a sheltie?

On September 7th, Joanie and I decided to shave Joshua. We had just been to the field and he had been playing ball, and was now horrendously hot. He plays until he gets sick, and even then only stops because I refuse to play any more with him.

The only reason we shaved him was that we thought he might be cooler. Here's some pictures of him from the previous weekend, proving that it wasn't because he was a disaster of matts (which he wasn't).

Okay, the top picture was taken a couple months ago at sunset. But the two underneath were taken the previous weekend. (We take lots of pictures of our animals... gotta love digital cameras, and we're still figuring out how to use Travis's new SLR.)

So after the frolick in the field by Joanie's house, we went to visit Granny and Gramm (Joanie's mum and grandmum). I'm not sure who is Granny and who is Gramm. (Or even the spelling of Gramm.) Joanie's mom has clippers, and so we decided, why not. (Joshua was panting heavily the whole time, still recovering from his play.)

We decided to clip him in Joanie's back yard, and I would hold him while Joanie would do the deed. We were quite pleasantly surprised that he held still, and didn't seem to mind being clipped at all. We gave him a couple breaks throughout the experience, where we took these pictures. How long did the entire process take? Well, The first pictures were taken at 4:00pm, and the last at 4:40pm. So about an hour.

	Here's the little angel after we started. We only had begun on his right side, and hadn't begun to work on evening it out. Joanie had more practice with clipping, so she took the honors. This way, if I didn't like it, I could say it was all her fault. :-)
Here is pile#2 of Joshua hair. He's in the background, running around. He generally hates to be restrained in any way, and we were surprised at how mellow he was being about the clippers. He hardly had to be held at all.
	Here's side#2, round 1. We hadn't tackled his front, underbelly, or worked at making things even yet. You can see though, that Joanie learns quickly through practice.
	Here he is when he was all done! His collar is now highly visible (and indeed needs to be tightened somewhat. Until he was clipped, we had no idea that the red dye from his collar had stained his fur, but there definitely is a pink line around his neck!
Here he is in action, his untrimmed tail flying out behind him! He actually has an injured back left leg, but he was carrying on bravely. (In the earlier play session, I think he hurt himself when he collided with a mail box post.) It didn't seem to bother him any, and he seems un-self-conscious about his lack of hairdo.
	Here he is, showcasing his legs which aren't trimmed. They puff out like those terriers do. The rest of him looks remarkably skinny now. I hope his coat will grow out enough in about a week that the clipper lines won't be visible. Although he looks mostly white (his undercoat), now that I've gotten used to it, I can see the red underneath (and the black is pretty apparent even in these pictures).
Here Craig and Bob are petting him. He looks slightly uncomfortable, but that's because he's almost being restrained.
	This is the purported reason that I had Travis's camera that day... a new batch of Joanie's horses came out of the kiln, and we wanted to document it.