Curse of the Were-poodle

Currently Reading: The Rosetta Codex by Richard Paul Russo

Boy did I ever have a day today. It was the kind of day where you start to think, "just one more thing goes wrong and I'm going home, climbing into bed and hiding under the covers."

When I got to work this morning, we were already behind. A few extra people had been added to our appointment book after I left last night. It's not supposed to happen. The folks on the other half of the store aren't supposed to make appointments for us because they don't know how long this sort of work takes. We were swamped right from the start. Three extra dogs in addition to our already full slate for the day. Well, at least they wrote it down. We weren't caught totally off guard.

After a HUGE run of dog washing (7 dogs in one hour) things slowed down for a while. I thought that was going to be the worst part of the day but oh how wrong I was. About an hour after the mass dog wash, one of the owners came in to pick up a poodle. I went back into the kennel area, opened the cage, nothing unusual there, same as always then the next thing I know two of my fingers are in the poodle's mouth. OUCH! That's right, it bit me. No warning. No growling, no barking, not even a dirty look. I opened the cage, it bit. BAM.

It wasn't a serious bite, fortunately. He bit me about as hard as a dog can bite and NOT draw blood. Actually, there was a little, and I mean VERY little. I doubt I shed more than a drop total. We're not talking serious injury here, just painful. Sort of like a really bad scrape in an inconvenient place. I was joking later that it's never the macho dogs that bite. No, if anyone asks me I have to say I got bitten by a POODLE! And worse, come the next full moon I'm going to turn INTO a were-poodle. My hair will get all curly and frizz up. The groomer, joking along with me, asked if that meant she had to shave me when it happens. CC later suggested I get pom poms on my wrists and feet :-)

Right, so far I've washed a mass of dogs and been bitten by a poodle. Pretty full day right? Normally I'd say yes but I still had one more nasty little adventure. One of the retrievers in for a bath let loose the WORST poo I have seen in a LONG time. It was a bad one. I saw how much was in the kennel and I thought, "damn that's more than I poo in a WEEK!" I have to figure this dog must have been saving it up just for us because that was in no way a normal amount of poo.

Guess who cleans up stuff like that. Yup, part of my job.

So, to recap, lots and lots of dog washings, poodle bite, HUGE poo. Now THAT'S what I call a full day.

Anyway, just keep all that in mind the next time you have a bad day at the office and, I dunno, your computer eats a file or something. Just be thankful you don't have bad days like *I* do :-)

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