What Are The Different Poodle Tail Styles 

Funky Poodle Tail Styles. But Why?

Around the globe, almost all the poodles look the same. Despite that fact, there is a difference that usually distinguishes them. This difference is tail fur trimming. Poodle tail styles create special appearances depending on what the poodle owner wants. 

In most cases, poodle haircuts make it easy to distinguish between one poodle from another; thus, it does not only contribute to your dog’s beauty. 

Man grooming black poodle

Poodle Hair Cuts For Canine Tails

Several poodle haircuts come in to enhance the dog’s mobility and also to maintain warmth in some parts of the dog’s body. In addition, protection of the internal organs of the poodle also improves due to certain poodle haircuts in specific parts of the dog. 

Listed below are the main poodle haircut styles for canine tails:

Teddy Bear (Labrador Trim)

The Labrador trim involves trimming the hair to the same equal length throughout the poodle’s body. Avoiding shaving its feet and face is the only factor distinguishing this haircut from the other grooming styles. 

For this grooming style, you can create modifications to your taste. There is a lot of innovation that you can make here. For example, many people prefer to shave, creating a round head to increase the poodle’s cuteness. 

Other names for this trim style include:

  • Teddy trim
  • Retriever trim
  • Lab trim
  • Lagotto trim

The main physical characteristics of Labrador poodle hair cut include:

  • A fluffy nose that comes in to make a face cute.
  • Not shaving the area around the tail is not too fluffy since it can become challenging to brush during cleaning. 
  • Short legs come in to make the style of the body match perfectly. 
  • The head is kept short and fluffy. That is a factor that comes in to bring out that perfect teddy bear style and at the same time not leave out too much hair to the brush when cleaning. 

The Kennel Cut (Sporting Trim)

The Kennel cut, also known as the sporting trim, entails trimming and leaving a top knot on the poodle’s head. In some cases, this cut contains some kind of further modifications. Some of these special modifications include leaving a poof at the left side of the poodle’s tail end. 

The top knot remains as long as possible during the poodle haircut process. At the same time, the tail hair grooming process comes round in shape. On the other hand, shaving the feet, face, and neck is optional. 

Further characteristics of the kennel poodle haircut include:

  • A poofy tail: The poofy tail matches the exact length of the topknot. This length is also optional in that you can keep it short to have an easy time during maintenance. 
  • Short body and legs: This characteristic enhances the simplicity of maintaining your poodle haircut. It makes it easy to brush and increases the cut’s duration. 
  • Short face and neck: This feature creates a classical style and at the same time keeps the poodle clean. 
  • A long topknot, but it can also be shorter to make maintenance of the poodle simple. 

The German Trim

The german poodle haircut is usually the best style, especially if your dog constantly gets ear infections. To increase the dog’s cuteness, you should perform the trimming process using hand scissors. 

You can perform the shaving by using a standard short blade or even a much smaller one for more accuracy. This trimming style comes in to be so beneficial to more active poodles due to the lack of a tail poof. 

Other standard features of the German Trim include:

  • Long legs with a short body: This feature makes the haircut flashy and straightforward at the same time. 
  • A short tail that gives an easy time cleaning and also when brushing. 
  • Long legs in shape: These legs are for improving style, but at the same time, they can be short. It does not affect the looks that much. 
  • Ear shaving: This feature is fantastic for poodles prone to getting ear infections. Poodle owners that cannot brush long ears can also find easy time here. 

The Continental Trim

This is a grooming style that stands out for poodles. Despite that, it requires much time to maintain since it involves patience and time. 

Each part of the continental trim has a specific purpose. For example, the fur around the legs in the form of balls increases the joints’ warmth and thus enhances the poodle’s mobility. 

Other characteristics of this style include: 

  • Pompoms at the hips to maintain warmth at the poodle’s joints. 
  • Shaving the poodles behind 
  • A long spray up to show style

Lamb Cut

This poodle haircut involves long legs with a shorter body. On the other hand, there is no exact length for this poodle trim style. 

Other features of the Lamb Cut include:

  • Shaving the tail to balance the face
  • A long or short top knot
  • Flashy poodle look with long legs

The Miami Pompom Trim

The trim comes in handy, especially if you want to maintain the French Poodle style. It is also known as the Blow Trim. 

This trimming style has more features like:

  • Long or medium topknot
  • Legs with pompoms and short body for quick maintenance
  • A short face for easy cleaning
  • Shaving of the base of the tail to make cleaning easy. 

What Does a Natural Poodle Tail Look Like

The poodle’s natural tail is long, curly, and full of fur. However, when walking around your neighborhood, it might be hard for you to spot a natural poodle tail since many people choose to trim them to bring out different tail styles according to their desires and taste. 

You should know that natural poodle tails are somehow unruly. The tails shapes are usually naturally different from one dog to another. One similarity with all of them is that they all have a length of 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) long.

Poodle grooming treatment

Are Poodles Born With Long Tail

Yes, poodles are usually born with a naturally long tail. However, do not assume that poodles have short tails because you come across several poodle puppies who have gone through the tail docking process. 

Many people confuse poodles that have gone through tail docking with poodles born with a natural tail. Such confusion comes by because many poodle keepers get to dock their dog’s tails as early as the first week from their time of birth. 

This move alters the natural appearance of a poodle tail. 

Guidelines For Show Poodle Tail Grooming

For your poodle to take part in a poodle show, you must make sure that your dog meets the AKC standards in place. Those specific standards include a certain tail length. When it comes to the length of the poodle’s tail, AKC has put in regulations for specific poodle types. 

In this case, the tail lengths are as follows:

  • Miniature Poodle: Leave a length of 0.19 to 0.26 inches (0.5 to 0.6 centimeters).
  • Toy Poodle: Leave 0.19 to 0.26 inches (0.5 to 0.6 centimeters) of length. 
  • Standard Poodle: Leave a length of 0.19 to 0.26 inches (0.5 to 0.6 centimeters).

A poodle tail must go through brushing several times to maintain its cleanliness. That is one of the reasons why tail trimming is essential here. For you to have an easy time brushing your poodle’s tail, you will need to keep your poodle’s tail hair shorter. 

To successfully cut your poodles tail hair, you will require the following supplies:

  • A sharp blade
  • A good set of clippers
  • Scissors or shears for trimming
  • A comb together with a Pin brush
  • A can of Cool Lube. This lube comes in handy during the cleaning of clipping blades. You do the blade cleaning as you work on the tail trimming process. You can also make the blade cleaning process simpler by following the instructions on the lube can.

If your poodle has short tail hair already, you may choose to skip the trimming process and keep up with the habits below:

  • Maintaining the poodle tail trim level.
  • Prevent entanglements by brushing the tail each day.
  • Condition and wash the poodle tail every time you perform a poodle bath.
  • Finally, clean out debris from all around the poodle’s tail. This debris mainly includes sticks, dust, and other plant materials. 

How To Groom Your Poodles Tail At Home

Grooming your poodle at home cannot be as tricky as many think. All you need to do is perform poodle clips around the tail to make the blow-dry and bathing process simple. The next step after the cut, bathing, and blowdry is trimming.

Remember that you trim your poodle according to your desire. When cutting the tail, you should be very careful. This fact applies to all poodle tails, including the toy poodle tail.

Listed below are the steps that you should follow when grooming your poodle at home:

  • Start by clipping the hair around the tail halfway from the base using a blade.
  • Let the hair at the remaining section of the tail remain long.
  • Take the remaining long hair and twist it into a hair rope tight. 
  • Using scissors, cut the end of the rope slightly from the tip. 
  • Finally, shake out the tail, and you will remain with a circle.
  • Use fishing shears to shape the final product into a pom.
Man trimming white poodle

Final Thoughts

Different poodle haircuts bring about several poodle tail styles. This article has cut across several of them together with creating and maintaining these poodle styles. As a result, you can now comfortably shape and maintain the tail of your poodle at home, even without help from a specialist. 

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