Owners often say a piece “isn’t quite right” without being able to say why. Almost always it is one of five things, and all five are things you can tell us before we start.
1. The ears
Set, tilt, and whether one falls differently from the other. This is usually the first thing an owner recognises, and it is the detail most often lost when a photograph is taken straight on.
2. The markings
Blazes, socks, brindle, tabby stripes — placed where they actually sit, not symmetrically. A stripe in the wrong place reads as a different animal.
3. The eyes
Colour, shape, and the expression. A pet looking slightly away reads differently from one looking straight at you, and it is worth deciding which you want.
4. The pose
The sit, the head tilt, the way the weight rested. A generic sitting pose is a sculpture of a dog; a specific one is a sculpture of your dog.
5. The coat
Where it is long, where it is short, the direction it falls, whether there is a ruff. Double coats, curly coats and wiry coats are all built differently.
How to tell us
You do not need the vocabulary. Send the photographs and add a line about what you would notice first if you walked into a room and saw them. That sentence is often more useful to us than a dozen extra pictures.
