Today a groomer from a salon in the same town as me came into the vet where I work with her dog. He was having a check up of some sort and asked if I had time to talk. Always ready to meet new groomers in my area, I went out to have a chat with her while she was waiting for the techs.
We get to talking and I find out what salon she's from (I know and have talked with the owner a few times) and find out that they recommend their hard to handle clients come to me all the time (yay?). That leads to us talking about hard to handle dogs in general. She asks if I just sedate them all. I tell her no, I don't like grooming sedated animals and only do so when the vets say the dogs HAVE to be sedated or if the animal is so stressed that's it's best for it to sleep through the groom. In general, I've found that dogs only made 'woozy' on Ace or something similar are more prone to try to eat my fingers. She then goes on to say that she wishes she worked in a place like me without windows so that she could 'discipline' the dogs when they were acting up like I do. That stopped me cold and all I could do was blink for a second. I took a deep breath to collect myself. First, I asked what made her think I 'disciplined' dogs. She responded that I MUST do -something- along those lines in order to do so many hard to handle dogs. Then, I pointed to the door with the large window that was clearly visible from the vet waiting area. That's my salon. People can walk by and look in any time. I went on to calmly ask her what she meant by discipline. She said, "Oh, you know...give them a swat when they won't settle down. Most people would say how mean that is but we groomers understand that most dogs are HORRIBLE and need to be put in their place." At this point I'm not sure if she's serious...or maybe trying to get me to say that I hit dogs so she'd feel right about doing it herself..or what. So I explain to her that I would never hit a dog, -especially- a client's dog, and that I sincerely believed that a dog I was grooming would NOT understand that I was hitting him to make him stop being fidgety on the table. Through all this I was holding myself back from hitting HER! It must have shown on my face because she quickly changed the subject to grooming tools and then got called in to her appointment. My boss/office manager happened to be working as the receptionist at the time. He looked at me and said, "We will NOT be hiring her. Ever."
The question that I keep asking myself now is....do I call and tell her boss that she has this attitude toward animals? What does she do with these poor dogs when she's back in the bathing room with them or no one's around? =/
We get to talking and I find out what salon she's from (I know and have talked with the owner a few times) and find out that they recommend their hard to handle clients come to me all the time (yay?). That leads to us talking about hard to handle dogs in general. She asks if I just sedate them all. I tell her no, I don't like grooming sedated animals and only do so when the vets say the dogs HAVE to be sedated or if the animal is so stressed that's it's best for it to sleep through the groom. In general, I've found that dogs only made 'woozy' on Ace or something similar are more prone to try to eat my fingers. She then goes on to say that she wishes she worked in a place like me without windows so that she could 'discipline' the dogs when they were acting up like I do. That stopped me cold and all I could do was blink for a second. I took a deep breath to collect myself. First, I asked what made her think I 'disciplined' dogs. She responded that I MUST do -something- along those lines in order to do so many hard to handle dogs. Then, I pointed to the door with the large window that was clearly visible from the vet waiting area. That's my salon. People can walk by and look in any time. I went on to calmly ask her what she meant by discipline. She said, "Oh, you know...give them a swat when they won't settle down. Most people would say how mean that is but we groomers understand that most dogs are HORRIBLE and need to be put in their place." At this point I'm not sure if she's serious...or maybe trying to get me to say that I hit dogs so she'd feel right about doing it herself..or what. So I explain to her that I would never hit a dog, -especially- a client's dog, and that I sincerely believed that a dog I was grooming would NOT understand that I was hitting him to make him stop being fidgety on the table. Through all this I was holding myself back from hitting HER! It must have shown on my face because she quickly changed the subject to grooming tools and then got called in to her appointment. My boss/office manager happened to be working as the receptionist at the time. He looked at me and said, "We will NOT be hiring her. Ever."
The question that I keep asking myself now is....do I call and tell her boss that she has this attitude toward animals? What does she do with these poor dogs when she's back in the bathing room with them or no one's around? =/
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