Pug Blood, Poodle Poo and The Zookeeper

Currently Reading: Pinball 1973 by Haruki Murakami

I had a rather interesting day at work today. Well, maybe interesting is a little strong. You may find it boring but compared to a normal day . . .

Actually, when you get right down to it, there IS no such thing as a normal day for me anymore. The most I can say is that few unusual things happened. Working in retail is unpredictable because you deal with people all day. Add working with animals and you can see why things are seldom "normal."

But I digress :-)

The day looked like it was going to be slow right up until about 4 pm. I had just one sheltie to do and it wasn't a problem dog. He just stood there and took it, which is pretty common for shelties. Considering how neurotic they are away from the salon, they're rather calm and patient when a bath is involved. Anyway, this particular sheltie was in for a bath and a sanitary cut. I mentioned those before. That's my new addition, dog ball shaving.

Now, CC calls and asks if she should visit. I'm thinking the day is slow and it might be neat for her to see me actually using the clippers on a dog so I tell her to stop in. Not long after I hang up I get another dog, a corgi and then a pair of pugs. By the time CC shows up, the salon is booming again and I'm really too busy to chat with her.

The other dogs were uneventful. The second pug is where this all starts. It was a pretty pug-shaped pug let me tell you. Big, round girl. Grunted in the usual pug ways. Had one nail that was maybe a week away from being ingrown so I was trying to save the owner a trip to the vet. Damn thing wouldn't sit still. Had one of their kids hold it, and tight and I was STILL having a hard time clipping the nails. Finally got it hooked and the dog did a big tug right as I was cutting. You guessed it, I cut the quick. Pug blood on my hands.

It wasn't a bad cut really. I've seen worse. It was bad for ME though. I rarely actually cut the quick and even when I do it's not by much. Most of the time it stops bleeding on its own without the quick stop powder.

While I was bathing the pugs, I took a call from one of our regulars. Her dog was rubbing its butt on the carpet. That really only means one of two things for us. Either the dog didn't have its anal gland expressed (a really messy and nasty procedure; google it some time) or the hair was cut funny on its behind and was causing an itch. Now, you KNOW it wasn't the second reason. Oh no, it's NEVER the clean reason.

I told her to bring the dog in and she showed up right as I was making my pug blood sacrifice to the gods of dog grooming. After I sent the pugs home I took the poodle. It was actually a tea cup poodle making about the size of a small rabbit and that's being generous. I remembered it as soon as I saw it. It came in on Wednesday and was REALLY hyper the whole time. In fact, on Wednesday, MOST of the dogs were hyper.

Needless to say since it was so hyper the whole anal gland thing didn't work very well and we never got a chance to cut his nails. Since those two things didn't get done on Wednesday, wouldn't make sense to charge for them again right? They're supposed to be included.

I took the little dog into the back. Put him in the tub. Put on the gloves and went to work. He was a squirter. I was actually pretty impressed by this one. He managed to squirt all the way to the wall by the tub. That's a very strong squirt for such a little dog.

Wiped his butt, took him out front again and trimmed his nails. He was all nice and tidy. I was explaining to the owners that sometimes things like that happen when the dog won't settle down. We're limited in what we can do in that situation. I told her there was no charge for the work I did today and that if she had that problem again, just bring the dog back and we'll take care of it. In the middle of that conversation, the lights went out.

Every night at 7:20 the lights go out because the grooming salon used to be opened until 7. The timers are still set with the assumption that we'd all be gone by 7:20. Problem is we're now open until 9 and the timers are controlled by the folks at headquarters in San Diego. Nothing I can do about it but turn them back on every hour (when you turn it back on, it only stays on for an hour, then it shuts off again).

Poodle lady left, I went to go turn on the lights and as I was making my way back to the salon, I saw a woman who appeared to need help. She had some kids that wanted to see some of the animals. No problem. We do that sort of thing all the time, especially with kids. I told her to go ahead and bring them in and I asked the cashier who was free to handle that sort of thing. Guess who was free. No really, guess. That's right, ME!

Everyone else was working to stock the shelves for the weekend and the cashier had to stay up front in case people wanted to check out. So, for the next hour I was zookeeper. We petted mice first, then hamsters, then ferrets. Then we went back to the reptiles section and petted a leopard gecko and a cuban knight anole (big green lizard). Next came the millipede. Oh what a joy that was. Every time they touched it, it grabbed hold of my hand even tighter. Talk about a freaky feeling. All those little legs gripping my fingers. WEIRD!

We walked around to the other side and TRIED to pet a snake but it got all nervous. Too much noise. Oh, did I neglect to mention that there were something like EIGHT kids? And all of them young. Must have been a slumber party or something.

Next came a firebelly toad. I tried to get a frog but the damn things were just too slippery. Just as well, the toad was a really bright green with red feet and looked WAY cooler.

After everyone got to pet the little toad, the kids told me there was a bird stuck upside down. I wasn't sure what this was all about so I put away the toad and went to the parakeet cage. Turns out one of them fell or something and got stuck between two of the food bowls. Sure enough, it was upside down and looking REALLY confused about things. Couldn't manage to get out because its feet couldn't get a grip on anything. Never fear, I'm a professional dog bather. I can handle ANY situation :-)

The last thing we did was pet the rabbits. Well, the one rabbit anyway. The other is too fast for me to catch. Very patient this rabbit we had. It didn't spook very much at all. I guess it's getting used to having all that attention. Lots of people like to pet the bunnies.

So there you have it, pug blood, poodle poo and the zookeeper, me. Good thing I'd done a chunk of my cleaning already. I didn't get back to the salon until almost 8:30. Still managed to get everything done though.

See? Interesting night.

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