Lots of people like the idea of grooming dogs for a living. Some survey sought to identify the most popular jobs to which British workers would like to switch in the coming 12 months, and dog grooming came out top. I can see – or at least used to see – the attraction. Pooch parlours are the most delightful shop windows on any high street. There the dogs stand, big and small, being shorn, snipped, styled and blow-dried for all to see. It’s a charming sight, to be sure. How nice it must be to be the human working in that environment.
But I strongly suspect that these dreams people are harbouring of getting into dog grooming wouldn’t long survive contact with reality. Take a closer look in the window of your local canine coiffurist. What is that look in those dogs’ eyes? In some, to be fair, I see pure enjoyment as they luxuriate in all the attention, from their stylists as well as passersby. In others I observe nothing more positive than submission, as they roll with this necessary evil.
As for the groomers themselves, when the woman who shears our dog emerges after three hours’ combat in the back of a laughably trendy pet shop, I find her expression slightly harrowing to behold. She charges a fortune. But you’d have to pay me twice as much to go through what she has obviously just been through.
We used to take him to a place run by a woman whose no-nonsense approach and occasionally industrial language endeared her to me no end. I saw her in the park once, where my dog greeted her affectionately, but warily. “He’s thinking: ‘This is the bloody woman who snips at my ass,’” said the groomer. Then one day I was walking past her place and she came running out to tell me she was closing down. She wasn’t unhappy about this. She was fed up with her line of work. “The bottom line,” she said, “is that dogs don’t like having their hair cut.”
When she closed up for the last time, she gave me her clippers. “Go on, you have a try yourself,” she said. I got as far as switching them on, at which point the dog fled, barking loudly. No, not for me.
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Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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