Pet grooming tl dr

[CRNDLSM]

What dogs are the easiest to groom?
And which ones the least?
Have you ever been bitten by a vicious ungroomed mutt that liked its mud caked coat as it was?

And how do they compare with cats?

Today I did a standard poodle, 1 year old, 55 lbs, 4 inches of hair, a few mats around the neck and legs, took 1 and a half hours to shampoo condition and blow dry, 2 and a half hours to trim all the hair to a half inch length.

The lady called asking for a standard poodle specialist.  My front desk told her I have a standard poodle and am pretty good.  This morning her husband drops the dog off, doesn't want his poodle to 'look like a poodle'.  

It had me thinking, what's my specialty? I used to think it was filing nails, I could get any dog smooth and close to the quick.  Now I realize it's difficult dogs.  Old dogs, puppies, aggressive, matted, triple coat, dogs banned from other places, cats, I just have a knack.  Maybe it's my customer service. People are just super thankful I will take their pet.

If all dogs were well behaved, the easiest dogs to groom have short hair, long noses, white nails.  Golden doodles and mixes are the hardest physically on a person, long hair, heavy weight, puppy temperament, often matted.  I give them an hour block in a schedule because it's essentially two or three dogs. Great Pyrenees usually too, and many of them get very heavy and old and can't stand for long. Shepherds and heelers are notoriously difficult to do nails, messing with their feet in general.  They are strong and fast.  

Long haired dogs can get matted, rescue dogs are often matted to the skin and have to be carefully shaved before a bath, the bath can send them into shock, might uncover scabs and tumors.

I have two dogs that I will add on any day no matter how busy I am.  A Yorkie who is shaved one length all over and a Pomeranian who gets scissored round, the dogs are so good, so quick, the parents are super nice, come often, and tip well. 

I have a family of four dogs, the parents have something to change every haircut and say rude things to the front desk people, the dogs are all small and simple for me, but none of the employees can stand the owners, plus they call about the time, even though 4 dogs in 4 hours is reasonable for one person.  It's stressful and therefore difficult.  I have fired clients before for complaining too much.  

I'm allergic to cats.  I've done more cats this year than my previous 6 years combined. I do not advertise it, I don't like to do it, it is very stressful, yet people will drive 30 minutes or more for me to do it.  I understand it,, the mats can tear their skin., I can't explain how I do it, I like to have someone else to hold them if necessary but sometimes I'm stuck by myself.  I've been bit and scratched nearly everywhere.  My cats have to be the first appointment, I want to get them out as fast as possible, the longer it takes the more dogs will be around.  I had an employee get bit by a cat and her hand swelled up, had a $400 doctor bill and was out for three days.  She won't do cats anymore.

I've been legitimately scared of two chows.  Still groomed them, terrified. Ive never really seen any horror stories but I've heard plenty.  I piss off my employees because everytime I take a dog they were struggling with, the dog is fine, like I have a magic touch, but really it's just behavior reading and muscle memory.  

A lot of schnauzers bite for a lot of reasons.

[busker]

A proper essay!
I never knew cat bites were that bad. Claws, yes.
But apparently their fangs can do real damage
Silly then of people to pretend that panthers aren’t that dangerous, when their miniature versions are terrifying

[rayheinrich]

Was looking for something else and just stumbled across this thread and couldn't help
but add my cat story.

I have lots of cats, I'm a dog person, shows you how much control I have over my life.
Anyway I moved back to my childhood home to flee Washington DC cuz it was too
expensive with no job and because my mom was getting old and could use a hand
and cuz her house was free. But down here starving kittens were always turning up
and there's just no way I'd could turn them down so I ended up with lots of cats and
blah blah blah. Anyway I had some partly feral cats that I was feeding and there was
a male that I wanted to get neutered. I try to get all my cats neutered so I enticed
him close with some food and then grabbed him to put him in a container and of
course he freaked out and bit down pretty hard but I'm really stubborn and though
it was very painful I managed to cram him into the case but he bit me hard quite a
few times on my left wrist.

Well I was really ignorant about cats and how dangerous their bite was because of
the infections you can get from it. If you ever get a deep puncture wound from a
cat's tooth, ALWAYS go to a doctor within a day of getting bitten. The treatment is
a cheap, common antibiotic that will treat it and you'll have no problems.

But I didn't know this and didn't go to the doc hoping it would get better and it just
kept swelling and getting worse and so I finally went to the hospital and it was a very
bad infection as the cat had bitten down to the bone.

They admitted me to the hospital, put me on intravenous antibiotics, and I was very
sick and the docs looked at my arm and the infection had actually eaten through two
tendons that controlled the little finger and ring finger on my left hand. So I got a
hand operation to repair the two tendons and to remove as much infection as they
could and was in the hospital for another week. When I got out my hand needed
to be in a cast for 4 months and then after that I needed occupational therapy for
another 4 months to mostly (but never completely) regain the use of my hand.
All this, of course, cost a bazillion dollars. A side benefit of this is that since I was
left-handed, I got to learn to write with my right hand. (The cat tamed down and
became a half-decent cat named Darrell There was another cat that looked just
like him and since I couldn't tell them apart, I named him Darrell as well.)

[CRNDLSM]

Oh you know! I work every now and then for a guy in Kemah, he would talk about the cat man from Nashville who captured all the cats in Kemah and had them fixed. He moved back to nashville and a few years later there's cats everywhere again. I think we should just import some snakes from Florida, the big ones, that should take care of them

[rayheinrich]

        when a snake bites a cat, the cat might die
        when a cat bites a snake, the snake will die