Or, at least my experience of my life with them. I have 2 Shih tzu's and while I love them to bits with every part of me... There are times they do make me want to pull at my hair. I would love to post pictures of the two of them, but given their personalities, they like to turn away just as the shutter goes off on the camera- creating nothing more than a blurred streaking mass of hair. The two of them have two completely different personalities. Damon, while he has his moments of being a hyper pain, is pretty relaxed. He has an attitude about him that says he doesn't give a damn and a look to match it. Gizmo however, is the complete opposite and runs amok and stirs all of the other dogs into a wild havoc.
With Gizmo I've come across a few problematic bumps in the road. We adopted him from a friend of a family member so we don't exactly know how old he is. His fur however is telling me he is starting to grow out of his puppy years, and he must be nearing his first year. Why do I think that? Because his big poof of a monkey butt, that was his puppy fur has become very problematic to thoroughly brush out. I brush this little fur ball multiple times a day and these knotted messes have kept returning. It probably didn't help that he kept chewing at his hair, slowly creating knots that were impossible to remove... So, I recently, and very sadly, had to chop off all of his luscious locks of hair.
With him being how he was, choosing nothing better than to make the knots worse, it was a choice that we had to make to keep him safe and free of matting. On the plus side, he looks utterly too cute for words now with his puppy cut. His head still has all of his fur, and so does his tail and feet. It's just the main part of his body that we have trimmed down now. He seems to love being freed of his fur and it's really only caused my fluffball to become a little bit more rambunctious. One day I will snag a great picture of him without his head turning away from my camera!
He's the some-what calmer part of our two shih-tzu clan. The two of them do share the same traits... Which include running into your legs as you walk, biting at your pant legs, and sometimes just biting you for the heck of it. This little booger would have to be our spoilt brat. When he wants to be picked up to be put on the couch, he will bark until you do so. If your attention is on something and he wants it? He will bark to let you know that, with the added kicks of his legs as he's doing so. You're probably wondering why we even let him bark that much, and honestly I do try to make him stop... But those kicks that he does as he barks are too funny to even describe here.
The problem we had with him and his fur happened a long time ago when he was a pup. My mother and I had gone out shopping for some time and when we returned we discovered that this little pain in the butt had gotten into a hidden piece of sticky paper. Ah, yeah... That was probably the most frantic we had been. He was our first shih-tzu and of course we had wanted him to look as great and amazing as all of the shih tzu's we've seen on pictures. They're gorgeous, their hair always flows in just the right way. We knew that it would be hard work, for sure, but we never expected for him to somehow end up gluing himself to a sticky paper that we were sure we had hidden perfectly well.
So that ends my frustrated ramble about my bad experiences with these two shih-tzu's. I wish you luck if you consider getting a shih-tzu. They are definitely well worth the hassle and the brushing and the bathing, but they are in the same sentence that much work. But, they really are great dogs. I wouldn't ever trade them in for anything, even now knowing the things that they can get themselves into. So if you ever do get a shih-tzu... Pick up all of your sticky papers! Or anything sticky and glue-y for that matter, haha!
With Gizmo I've come across a few problematic bumps in the road. We adopted him from a friend of a family member so we don't exactly know how old he is. His fur however is telling me he is starting to grow out of his puppy years, and he must be nearing his first year. Why do I think that? Because his big poof of a monkey butt, that was his puppy fur has become very problematic to thoroughly brush out. I brush this little fur ball multiple times a day and these knotted messes have kept returning. It probably didn't help that he kept chewing at his hair, slowly creating knots that were impossible to remove... So, I recently, and very sadly, had to chop off all of his luscious locks of hair.
With him being how he was, choosing nothing better than to make the knots worse, it was a choice that we had to make to keep him safe and free of matting. On the plus side, he looks utterly too cute for words now with his puppy cut. His head still has all of his fur, and so does his tail and feet. It's just the main part of his body that we have trimmed down now. He seems to love being freed of his fur and it's really only caused my fluffball to become a little bit more rambunctious. One day I will snag a great picture of him without his head turning away from my camera!
This is Damon
The problem we had with him and his fur happened a long time ago when he was a pup. My mother and I had gone out shopping for some time and when we returned we discovered that this little pain in the butt had gotten into a hidden piece of sticky paper. Ah, yeah... That was probably the most frantic we had been. He was our first shih-tzu and of course we had wanted him to look as great and amazing as all of the shih tzu's we've seen on pictures. They're gorgeous, their hair always flows in just the right way. We knew that it would be hard work, for sure, but we never expected for him to somehow end up gluing himself to a sticky paper that we were sure we had hidden perfectly well.
So that ends my frustrated ramble about my bad experiences with these two shih-tzu's. I wish you luck if you consider getting a shih-tzu. They are definitely well worth the hassle and the brushing and the bathing, but they are in the same sentence that much work. But, they really are great dogs. I wouldn't ever trade them in for anything, even now knowing the things that they can get themselves into. So if you ever do get a shih-tzu... Pick up all of your sticky papers! Or anything sticky and glue-y for that matter, haha!
