What It's REALLY Like

Some people think being a groomer must be an amazingly fun job. "Wow!" they say, "You're a dog groomer? You must LOVE your job, right? I mean, you get to play with dogs all day!"

Um, no.

Not that I don't love my job, I do, but it is not all rainbows and unicorns. And rarely is there time for "playing."

So I've devised an imaginary schedule of a day that includes many of the crappy situations we deal with on a daily basis. Now, any typical day, you will deal with AT LEAST one or two of the things I will mention, just usually not everything every day (luckily!).

8:00 - Your first dog of the day is a regular, an Alaskan Malamute. She is a very good dog, which is good because she is also very big and very hairy. Luckily she hops into the tub without a problem and stands still for the bath, but she starts howling - and does not stop for the next two hours. This is where an iPod and hearing protector earmuffs come in handy.

After the bath, she hops willingly from the tub to the drying table. You are already soaking wet because she shakes constantly, and now you are about to get covered with the undercoat that is being blasted from the dog by the velocity dryer. This is the dog groomer version of being tarred and feathered. (Not thinking about it, you will later get strange looks at the grocery store after work as you are shedding throughout the store.)

Once she's dry, you need to brush her really well and cut her toenails. The brushing is fine, but if you aren't careful, she will donkey kick you in the face when you are cutting her toenails.

Ok, this one's all done, what's next?

10:00 - It's a 6-month-old Maltese puppy that has never been groomed before and is matted to the skin. First you must explain to the owners that the dog is matted and must be shaved, then you must spend the next 10 minutes explaining WHY you can't just "take a little off the top."

You finally get the OK from the owners to shave the puppy, and you decide to shave her before the bath because she is so matted that the velocity dryer won't help much, and she will probably be afraid of it anyway.

You hold the puppy up, turn on your clippers, then just hold her for a couple of minutes while she screams and frantically tries to dodge the clippers. Eventually she calms down a little bit, but not much, and shaving her takes forever because you have to get your blade under all the matting, and this is no easy matter when she won't hold still.

It takes almost 45 minutes to shave the puppy because she is SO matted and SO wiggly. She was scheduled for an hour and a half, and if you factor in the time it took to talk to the customers before you could even start grooming her, she's been here almost an hour already. You have half an hour before your next dog comes in and you haven't even washed this one yet.

She somewhat tolerates the bath, but when you start to blow dry her, she freaks out and starts screaming and pooping. You didn't react quickly enough and wound up splattering the wall with poop from the force of the dryer. While you turn off the dryer, the dog starts dancing a jig in her own poop, and now you have to wash her feet again. You secure her in the tub, clean her poop off the table, wall, and floor, then wash her feet and towel dry her again.

You have to get her dry somehow, so you switch down to the lowest speed on the dryer, and the dog is still terrified, but at least she doesn't poop again. Even though she is mostly naked from being shaved before the bath, it takes FOREVER to get her dry. You are glad you shaved her before the bath, because it would be nearly impossible to get all that matted hair dry at this rate.

When you finally finish drying the puppy, you only have 10 minutes before your next dog comes in. You probably won't be able to finish this dog in 10 minutes, so you will start (and possibly finish) your next dog late.

11:30 - Your next dog shows up, so you have to stop grooming the Maltese puppy to go speak to your next clients. This one is a rescued Shih Tzu that bites you every single time you groom him. Luckily there is a pen open you can put him in while you finish the puppy. It would be impossible to get him out of a kennel and difficult to pry out of a corner of the groom shop.

Ten minutes later you finish the puppy and call the owners. You know the shock of actually seeing their puppy naked will almost kill them, and you are not looking forward to their reactions when they come get the dog.

You go get the Shih Tzu out of the pen. Luckily you left the leash on him, because picking him up is the hardest part. You walk him from the pen to the groom shop and he is nervous, but ok. You bend over and speak to him in puppy talk and watch his body language. He rolls over for you to rub his belly, and you take this to be a good sign, that maybe he finally trusts you. After a minute of belly rubbing and baby talking, you move to pick him up -

AND HE BITES YOU.

Luckily his mouth is small enough and his teeth are dull enough that he didn't break the skin. Now, upset rather than injured, you still need to figure out how to pick up what has turned into a whirling mass of teeth and terror. You wind up lowering the table to its lowest height and yank the dog up onto the table by the leash, wishing you could at least support his butt but not wanting to get bit again.

He's OK for the bath, but when you turn on the dryer, he poops. This time you are prepared for it and manage not to splatter it anywhere. He stays out of it and you clean it up quickly and get back to drying him.  You try to hold his head so you can dry it, but he is scratching the heck out of your arms with his front nails.

You finally get him dry and start on the haircut. He is OK for the haircut...

Except for his face, his neck, his legs, his tail, or standing up. So basically everything but shaving his back, he is trying to take chunks out of your hands.

Eventually you finish him and instead of deciding he looks good and you can stop, it's more of a mutual decision that he will not allow you to do any more. You look at his crooked ears and shaggy legs and know that the owners won't mind because they know he is naughty but you wish you could make him look better anyway.

Finally, it's time for lunch. You lost a few minutes when the Maltese puppy put you behind, but you are still glad to sit and relax for 20 minutes.

1:30 - Your next dog is a Standard Poodle. They show up 10 minutes late for their appointment. The bath and blow dry go just fine, but when you go to do the clean feet (shaved), he fights and pulls and you spend twenty minutes playing tug of war with all of his legs. Same thing with the clean face, he is tossing his head like he's Black Beauty or something. Other than this, his cut goes OK.

3:30 - Last dog of the day, finally! It's a cocker spaniel who gets shaved. Only problem is she is a nervous peer and leaves a urine trail from the front door of the store to the door of the groom shop that must be mopped up. You go to pick her up and apparently squeeze more urine out of her which lands on your arm and drips down to your hand. You put her in the tub and clean yourself up.

She cowers and shakes the entire bath and blow dry but at least does not pee or poop.

Sadly, she flat out refuses to stand up for any of the grooming, and she is rather overweight, so you're left holding up about 30 pounds with your left hand while shaving and whatnot with your right for her butt, underside and legs.

Her body gets shaved but her ears are left full, and they are matted. She screams and fights the entire time you brush them out.

When she is finally done, you put her in a pen so she doesn't pee all over the groom shop. When she goes home, you follow her to the door with the mop because she also pees when she is excited to go home.

OK, time to go home! But wait, now you have to clean. Remember that hairy Malamute? Yeah, that Malamute hair is still all over the tubs and floor and must be cleaned up. The tubs must also be cleaned, shampoo filled for the next day, vacuum, and disinfect your stuff.

5:30 - Finally on your way home, exhausted with an achy back and sore feet. Also, you smell like a sewer. Now you get to come back tomorrow and start all over again.

Other groomers, did I forget anything? I'm pretty sure I did, but at this point I'm glad I was able to wrangle this much out of my brain. I used up most of my brain cells at work.