Yes, I guess I am.
I willingly take hard to handle dogs.
Dogs that have been thrown out of other shops.
Scared, fearful, and nervous dogs.
Most of the time I have no problem working with these dogs.
It just takes a little extra time, and a lot of talking and loving.
I am pretty good at reading a dog, and working through their problems.
Every once in a while I get a dog in like the one today.
This is 'Fluffy'. (Name has been changed to protect me.)
It has been 5 months since I groomed him last.
'Fuffy' was over grown and matted.
His face is very matted.
'Fluffy' is not a fear biter.
He is not nervous.
He is actually very calm, until...
He has one of his mad rages.
They come out of the blue.
For no apparent reason.
Then watch out, because he is out for blood.
He has to be muzzled for most of the grooming.
You know there are going to be problems when the owner backs away as you pick their dog up and he growls.
For most of the groom he sits there just fine.
THEN, without any warning...
He strikes!
When he does this I just wait for the rage to pass.
Then I continue grooming.
The muzzle actually helps to keep him settled.
The last couple time I groomed him, we got along fine.
He had to be muzzled for working on the body, but would let me work on his face without the muzzle.
Today was different.
Maybe it was a full moon.
Maybe he missed a meal this morning.
Maybe he got up on the wrong side of his dog bed today.
MAYBE he just had a taste for blood.
(His owners should really stop letting him watch those Vampire movies.)
After I was finished clipping his body, I took off the muzzle to work on his head.My first sign that this was not going to go well?...
He grabbed the paper towel out of my hand and tore it to shreds when I tried to wipe the slobber off of his face.
We moved on, and he let me clip the mats off of his head.
Everything was going fine.
He was fine.
THEN...
He flipped.
I held on.
He went for blood.
He was not going to stop until he bit something.
He did.
ME.
As you can see, in the back ground, he is sitting calmly once again waiting for me to finish.
While trying to calm him, and unsuccessfully keep him from biting me, he was also ripping the cr*p out of my other arm.
In his frenzy to bite me, he also bit his own tongue.
It looked like a blood bath.
I spent 5 minutes, slowly putting the muzzle back on.
I finished the face the best I could.
What makes a dog, with such a cute face, want to eat someone alive one minute, then sit there and let you rub and pet him all over as if nothing happened the next?
Here, he is just about finished.
I say 'just about', because I could not leave well enough alone.
After I took off the muzzle again, I tried to scissor around his mouth a little.
He let me scissor a little, but common sense won out, and I stopped before he could bite the scissors and really hurt himself.
I did not like the way the face looked.
The owners loved it. :)
Oh..my brush also survived, barely...
He tried really hard to bite it in half before I was able to save it.
Yes, I gave him another appointment.
Yes, I will groom him again.
Yes, I AM CRAZY!
Happy grooming,MFF
Lol, you are not crazy! :)
ReplyDeleteI had the same problem with my foster Beagle whenever I attempted to groom him. We think he may have had a neurological problem.
He was such a sweet little puppy, 9 weeks old and perfectly normal until sometimes when out of the blue he would go all 'Cujo'- biting and growling like he was possessed. If ever I was grooming him and he had one of these 'episodes' he'd either bite the heck out of the slicker brush until his mouth was bloody or latch on to my arm and not let go.
Yes, I have strolled calmly through my house with this tiny snarling Beagle puppy hanging off my wrist by just his teeth while I look for something to pry him off with! :P