Why We Have Dogs that Don’t Need Groomers

We are very bad a grooming. It’s why we currently only have dogs with very short hair that don’t need to be brushed a lot. Back when we had Moree, we used to have problems with him getting mats behind his ears and on his bum. The biggest problem was, he disliked grooming as much as we did. If we were paying active attention to him, his preference was that we were throwing the ball. He did not want to be petted, he wanted to fetch.

Dealing with the mats behind his ears wasn’t too hard. A running our fingers through that hair when we did pet him could untangle it and we could catch mats pretty early and simply snip them out. But the mats on his fuzzy butt were a different story.

If one person was holding treat, the other person could get behind him and trim the mats, but he didn’t have much patience for it. In fact, his patience often didn’t even last as long as the teats. Still, we mostly kept on top of it, until C’s mom moved in with us.

There was a lot of stuff going on in our lives at the time, and cutting mats off of Moree’s rear end was not a priority. When we finally had time to trim him, the mats had gotten so bad that our scissors could not cut through them.

Since besides his limited patience, Moree also had a bad reaction to anything that made noise (vacuums, blenders, electric razors), we chose to not risk injury to him or to us and took him to a groomer.

When we took him to the PetsMart groomer, we brought a muzzle with us. We specifically mentioned that he had limited patience with grooming and might snap. We also asked for them to just shave his rear end, in order to keep the appointment as short as possible. They refused the muzzle and said not to worry.

A few hours later, we called to find out if he was ready and then said no, but he should be in about 30 minutes. 15 minutes later they called and asked us to come get him. We asked if he was done, and they said no, but he’d snapped at one of their groomers so they were done with him.

When we arrived to get him, we commented that while we were sorry he had snapped, we had warned them of the snapping and offered to leave a muzzle and they refused. Then they brought him out, and we noticed that they had ignored our request to shave his bum. He had, in fact, snapped at the groomer after close to 45 minutes of the man combing out all of his mats.

At that point, we paid, but also asked to speak to a manager. We once again apologized for the snapping, but noted that they had ignored our warnings about his limited patience and disregarded our request to shave him, specifically to prevent him from snapping at someone. We suggested that maybe their front desk person should pass requests and information on to their groomers. And we left.

We won’t ever go to back to PetsMart groomers, but for now, we’re content to have dogs that don’t need to go to the groomers.

Pamela says:

November 8, 2012 at 3:40 pm

When Honey came to live with us, I was most worried about the grooming. I've always had Shepherd mixes who didn't need much. Honey hasn't been terrible to groom and, luckily, she's very calm and patient.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with PetSmart. I don't go often, but I'm lucky to have an excellent groomer in town. She even let me stay in her shop while she was grooming Honey. And she made Honey's comfort her highest priority.

Of course, having short haired pets is a great idea. But sometimes you can't control who you fall in love with. 🙂

ErinShanendoah says:

November 10, 2012 at 12:50 pm

But we can make a conscious decision not to ask for any meet and greets with Shelties at the shelter. 😛
I agree, you can't control which dog you fall in love with, so if we end up with a long haired dog again, we'll be better, we promise.

2 Punk Dogs says:

November 8, 2012 at 6:36 pm

Definitely agree with your choice of short haired dogs, it's so much easier with "wash and wear" fur. Unfortunately the punks love to roll in whatever grossness they can find, we've had weeks when they've needed 3 baths in a row. I can just imagine how much worse it would have been with longer fur 🙂

ErinShanendoah says:

November 10, 2012 at 12:54 pm

Moree, besides hating to be groomed, loved mud and any water that wasn't deeper than his chest (unless we were trying to give him a bath, and then the water needed to be attacked), so sadly, living in the Seattle area, was often muddy. We had one winter where he essentially had to be picked up and carried to the tub every time he came inside, because he created this fabulous (to him) mud path along the fence that he would run up and down. While June loves brambling and Larry will jump a fence into a bog, neither of them require even the amount of the bathing Moree did. He was, in general, a high maintenance dog. (And oh how I miss him.)