The Bichon is the most scissor-intensive small breed we groom. The look — a perfectly round head, a body like a cloud — comes almost entirely from hand-scissoring, and that is worth knowing when you compare grooming prices between breeds of the same size.
A curly double coat, which is unusual
Most curly breeds are single-coated. The Bichon is not: it has a soft dense undercoat beneath a coarser curly outer coat, and the two together produce the springy texture the breed is known for. It also produces the breed's defining problem — that combination mats closer to the skin, and more invisibly, than almost any other pet coat.
A Bichon can look immaculate and be solidly matted underneath. The surface curls hide everything. As with Poodles, the answer is line brushing to the skin and a comb check, not a slicker over the top.
The head is the whole job
A correct Bichon head is a sphere. Ears blend into it invisibly, the muzzle sits inside the circle rather than protruding from it, and there is no visible transition anywhere. That shape cannot be clipped — it is built with scissors, checked from several angles, and adjusted continuously as the dog moves.
It is also why two groomers produce visibly different Bichons from the same dog. If you have a shape you like, a photo at drop-off communicates more than any description will.
Keeping white white
Bichons show everything: tear staining under the eyes, saliva staining around the mouth, urine staining on the legs of males, and plain Oklahoma red dirt everywhere else. The levers, in order of how much they actually matter:
- Dry the face daily. Damp hair stains; dry hair mostly does not.
- Keep the eye corners trimmed short so there is less hair to hold moisture.
- A whitening shampoo at bath time — a violet pigment that cancels yellow. Visible, temporary, harmless.
- Thorough drying at the groom. A properly dried Bichon coat stands up and looks bright; a damp-dried one goes flat and dull within a day.
Nothing removes existing stain from the hair shaft. It grows out and gets cut off.
Frequency, honestly
Four to six weeks. A Bichon is not a breed you can stretch to eight — the coat mats faster than it grows into a longer style, so a late appointment usually means a shorter cut than you wanted. If money or time is the constraint, a shorter cut on schedule serves the dog far better than a longer cut on a slipping one.
Booking
A Bichon groom is The Royal Treatment: bath, blow-out, fifteen minutes of brushing, ears, nails and the full scissored cut, from $65 for a small dog. The first fifteen minutes of brushing is included; past that, de-matting runs $10 per additional fifteen minutes, and on this coat that time gets used more often than owners expect.