When it comes to pets most owners are well meaning, but largely willingly blind to their pets needs. Fluffy, the Bichon should weigh roughly 15 pounds or so for his size. Fluffy however weighs more like 40 and looks roughly like a large white curly grape. His neck and skull are the same size, and his belly has a bald spot from where it drags around on the stairs when he wobbles up them. When tactfully discussing Fluffy’s difficulty standing on the table for any length of time due to his weight, as his joints are not made to sustain the immense load upon them, Fluffy’s owner told me that Fluffy wouldn’t stop eating so much, so this discussion I should be having with Fluffy. Yes…yes…she asked me to speak to the dog about restraining himself from eating the food in the bowl that she gave to him. Strangely I did not burst out laughing or even drop my jaw onto the floor that Fluffy was laying upon. I tilted my head for a moment to compose my thoughts, and asked her if she fed Fluffy each day. She said she did. I asked what the method of food delivery was. She said she fed him from his favorite red bowl. I asked her if perhaps she could put less in the bowl, since Fluffy was so tempted to overeat, if perhaps there was less in the bowl, he would not be so inclined. If he asked for seconds, or thirds or fourths, since she now knows that the pressure his weight is putting on his joints will collapse them and eventually make him entirely unable to walk at all, she could discuss this with Fluffy at the time and explain she loved him, and was doing it for his own good. She considered that for a moment, nodded and agreed she would give that a try.
Eight weeks later Fluffy had lost five pounds. It seems that she was able to convey the fact she wouldn’t be overfeeding him to his satisfaction. These are the moments I am talking about, the ones that make you wonder how anyone could reasonably say these things. While I do like Fluffy very much, and find he is an intelligent dog, I’m fairly sure were I needed to control his diet it wouldn’t come to a debate, but rather “Here’s your food Fluffy, and that’s all you get.” Weirdly the ability to control what a dog eats goes to the one with the opposable thumbs. Crazy concept I know, but still true.
Another fine one of these face palm moments came when a man brought in his aggressive Chow mix. Now the man explained the dog was out of control, aggressive, bites, freaks out, was utterly horrible, and couldn’t be brushed let alone bathed at home. I shrugged, nodded, this was my specialty, I am the one who deals with the “problem dogs” that are over 60 pounds. It’s what I do best. I find a way to get the job done without losing any body parts and try to make it enjoyable or at least tolerable for the dog. Some dogs hate water so much, the best I can do is tolerable. So I took “Lady” in to see what I could do about getting her fixed up. It had been roughly 5 or 6 years since he had her groomed, and the groomer asked they not return. I took his information and told him I would need about four hours to get her finished. He said he’d return but wanted I suppose to see how she would be before leaving. Perhaps he thought I’d get 2 minutes in and decide to send her home, I’m not sure. So I put the girl on the table and the first thing I did was clip her nails. They were grossly overgrown but it had been so long since she’d been groomed I can understand why that was so. After clipping these and shaving out her feet so that she was no longer walking on huge mops of fur and could stand on her feet and have some sure footing the dog had yet to do anything besides simply stand there. I figured perhaps I hadn’t hit her “trigger” points yet. I began to split the mats in her rear section figuring any second now Lady would turn into Vampira and try to remove a body part. She stood there, looking rather bored. After brushing her to remove most of the dense undercoat and a majority of the matting I put her back on the floor and led her to a crate where she could relax while I set up the tub for her bath.
When the bath was ready, I brought Lady out, bathed her without incident and all in all she seemed to actually enjoy the entire process. She was even willing to turn around in the tub when I gave her the slightest direction. She stood when I prompted her to so I could wash her hind end, and even picked her head up as I led her to without any fight or fuss so I could rinse the top of her head without water going in her ears. I toweled her off, scooped her up and led her back to her crate, put a nice fluffy towel in and of her own accord she walked in and lay down. I put a dryer on her for a bit and wondered what exactly made her turn into the dog that would remove my face.
I blow-dried her, and brushed her out, cleaned her ears and even peeked in at her teeth by lifting her lip, she didn’t care. I called Lady’s owner and he came back to get her. I explained that instead of the $100 price quote he was given on the phone she would be only $60, since Lady was indeed a Lady and not even remotely aggressive or even uncooperative in any way. I went back to her crate and led her out. She walked, tail wagging and happy with her new bandana I had placed around her neck looking like a new dog. The owner’s brow creased. I asked if there was a problem. I figured he’d be happy his dog was $40 less than expected. “She didn’t even try to bite you once?” I shook my head and explained she was quite literally the perfect dog. He looked me square in the eye and said, “Why not?” After a few slow blinks and a throat clearing I tried to think of why his dog decided not to bite me. The best I could come up with was that I tried not to make the experience uncomfortable for her and as much as possible rather enjoyable. “But…she didn’t even try to bite you a little?” he said with a great deal of disappointment. I explained she was a good dog with a shrug and there was no biting. I opened the half door and handed him the end of her leash and she stood happily wagging her tail. He looked at her and said to the dog, “Well for $60 the least you could have done was bite her once!” I choked, and tried with all my might to resist the temptation of saying something. The temptation was too great for Kathy though, and she asked, “You wanted your dog to bite her?” He nodded, “At least then my dog wouldn’t be a total wuss.” We both stood dumbfounded for at least 15 actual seconds. He handed me the $60 and I thanked him. At somewhat of a loss for words I apologized for his dog not wanting to bite me and he left in a huff. It was one of those surreal moments where you kind of wonder, “Am I in some sort of late night pizza induced dream??”
Another owner came in, very upset. She had her dog groomed the day before and she was in a rip roaring snoot. She came in carrying her Pomeranian and slammed the door behind her. She looked over the half door and demanded that she her dog be “dealt with immediately”. I asked what the problem was and walked quite briskly to the half door. She thrust her small dog “Munchkin” into my arms and stated that she couldn’t get the “stupid bandana” off and wanted it removed immediately. The woman was roughly 25 years old. I reached over the top of the dog’s head and slid it over her head in a smooth motion. There was about two to three inches of slack in the bandana so it wouldn’t create any matting by rubbing against the long neck ruff when I put it on, the slack was still there. I looked at her, and then at Munchkin, then handed her the dog back and offered the bandana. She then decided she’d say one last thing before leaving that left us quite literally rolling on the floor laughing about 5 seconds after she pulled out of the parking lot. “I don’t know why you put those things on! You have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to get them off!”
Now I am not a rocket scientist, nor do I pretend to be one on TV, nor have I slept at a Holiday
inn recently (vague commercial reference from the limited television I watch), however the concept of sliding a round object such as a collar over a dog’s head and off of their neck is by in large something a dog itself can figure out. This leads me to wonder, should I send my Pug to NASA?Another face palm moment came when a woman brought her Labradoodle in. Labradoodles are the new “chic” dogs. Designer dogs some call them. It’s a mix of a Lab and a Standard poodle. Essentially it’s a Lab sized dog with Poodle coat that adds up to a gigantic amount of maintenance and effort on the part of the owner to keep these dogs from being a horrible disgusting matted mess. All in all great if your family has allergies to dog fur as they have hair not fur, but the maintenance costs are extreme. One woman brought her dog in and it was 2 years old. It had never been groomed before. After feeling the dog it was apparent she too had been grossly lied to by the breeder who said the dog didn’t require brushing either, this is very common and we hear it from every Labradoodle owner, it's just not right the breeders do this, but they do. It was matted literally to the skin. So her dog would need to be sheared, like a sheep. I was hesitant about doing in, it’s dangerous. I can’t see what’s under that matting and often there can be lesions caused by the matted hair pulling the skin quite literally apart. I don’t like these kinds of grooms, if there are preexisting injuries under that 5 inch pelt of matted fur the owner doesn’t know they’re there until I expose them and then they almost always want to believe that the grossly infected area that has obviously been there for months wasn’t ignored by them, but happened right then and there in the grooming shop. I had her sign a consent form explaining that due to this horrid condition it was possible that the dog could suffer from clipper burn, or perhaps even get cut, and a laundry list of other awful things that could happen, all of which I was not responsible for since the dog was in this condition. She signed the consent form, and I resisted the urge to have her take it to the vet to be shaved with a surgical blade while under anesthesia.
After 2 hours of work the dog was free of his pelt of fur. It came off in a singular solid piece that looked like I had just skinned some sort of giant wild canine from the muzzle all the way back to the tail. The dog now had literally ¼ inch of fur left on his body. He was the happiest dog you’ve ever seen once I was done, he did however have numerous hot spots on his skin but aside from that he looked fairly decent but still needed to be bathed very badly. I bathed him and dried him, and finished him and she returned to find her Labradoodle looked an awful lot like a Lab now. She handed me the money for his groom as I explained how she’d need to care for his hot spots so they could properly heal. She seemed quite pleased. I asked if she’d like to set up another appointment, as it would be only about 12 more weeks before he’d need another haircut to keep him in a length that was easily manageable. She gasped. I wasn’t sure why and just waited for what it was that she was gasping about. “He will need another grooming?” I nodded a bit confused. “You mean this is going to grow back?” Small pause on my part, compose, collect thoughts, deep breath and I explained that they have hair, not fur like most breeds and in either case trimmed fur or hair would indeed grow back, much like our hair after a haircut. I smiled and tried to look like this was a question we received all the time. “But…well this means he won’t just…be this length forever?” I shook my head, and explained he would not, but it was easy enough to return him to that length with a quick groom. Big smile as I delivered the happy solution. She was stunned. “Well you didn’t tell me I’d have to do this more than once when I brought him in!” Confusion crosses my face. “I bought this dog not wanting a long haired dog and now you tell me he’ll be long haired if I don’t have him groomed?!” I nod, not really sure how to respond to that question. I was thinking that it was rather evident from the 2 years she was living with the dog that it was indeed a long haired dog, and geez lady dog beautician not magician. I keep my thoughts to myself as she rambles on with how unfair that is of me to tell her that her dog’s hair will grow back and how absolutely ridiculous it is to think that she would want to have the dog get a haircut all the time. I explained that she didn’t have to have it cut if she choose to brush it out she could maintain it in a very nice and neat…and she cut me off with “Oh you people are unbelievable!” and stormed out. I looked at Kathy trying to figure out what just happened there and she looked as utterly lost as I was.
She had been a referral from our friend who trains dogs. We gave her a call to thank her for sending us the crazy lady, but her phone was busy so I left a message on her voice mail. The phone rang about 15 minutes later. It was her, and she had just gotten off the phone with the enraged Labradoodle owner who was angry as all get out we had done something to her dog that would make his hair eternally grow back! Yes, that’s right, we have the power to alter nature’s course and create hair growth where should be none, Rogaine eat your heart out! Our groomer scissors are magical in nature and can make hair that should not grow return bountiful and thick! She had apparently tried to explain to the woman that it was nothing we had “done” to the dog to make the hair grow back but like when she got a haircut her hair did eventually grow back, she didn’t just get a haircut when she was 2 and that was it for the rest of her life. The woman would hear none of it and left the dog tied to our friend’s front fence and drove off telling her to keep it.
We called a long standing customer who had lost their older Standard Poodle, explained what had occurred and they were quite happy to take the magical hair regrowing dog. He comes in every 6 weeks for a haircut now. Nice dog too. Each time his new owner makes and appointment for him he says he would like to schedule a haircut for his mutant Labradoodle.
These are merely a few of the quite literally hundreds upon hundreds of things that we see daily that make us blink numerous time while we try to find a polite and tactful way to deal with whatever shocking thing the customer has just said. I hope you find them amusing, I know we surely did. It’s part of why I love my job. The things folks say are by far the funniest things I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
I’ll try to post a few of these face palm moments each month because they are simply too priceless not to share.
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