[mostlymutts]

Oh, gotcha.

I wouldn't take my dog back to someone who injured them repeatedly either. Maybe not even after just once. On the other hand, I am not perfect and understand that an accident can happen. And yeah, it would serve no purpose to take your dog to a groomer that, um, doesn't get up and groom.

I misunderstood your post. I thought you were talking about the groomers here. These guys, for the most part, have been telling stories about the condition the animals were in when they got them. The horror stories are the owners fault.

[MoonStr80]

Ditto ..

No I was speaking about the experience that I had

Originally Posted by mostlymutts

Oh, gotcha.

I wouldn't take my dog back to someone who injured them repeatedly either. Maybe not even after just once. On the other hand, I am not perfect and understand that an accident can happen. And yeah, it would serve no purpose to take your dog to a groomer that, um, doesn't get up and groom.

I misunderstood your post. I thought you were talking about the groomers here. These guys, for the most part, have been telling stories about the condition the animals were in when they got them. The horror stories are the owners fault.

[Pit_Bull_Lady]

Originally Posted by ashes

but what i want to know is.. has anyone else ever seen anything like that before???

I've seen maggots a few times during my groomng career.

I've seen dogs with flea infestions that were so bad the water was red when I bathed them.

I've seen a dog covered (and I mean covered) with engorged ticks.

Hands down-the most disgusting thing I've EVER seen was a dog with a roundworm infestation so bad that LIVE worms kept coming out of his rectum.
NAASSTTY.....!!

Needless to say, I had to call his owner to come back and pick him up....

[dansamy]

Can I gross ya'll out with nurse stories about human infestations of assorted critters?

[Pit_Bull_Lady]

That's okay by me....Although my sister is a nurse, and I've heard some very nauseating stories from her......

[midge0413]

first of all (and this is just my opinion) i don't see why anyone wouldn't want to bring their dog to a groomer. (if you can groom your dog yourself then that's one thing) most of us go to school or are taught by someone who was taught by someone etc. i hate to say it but accidents do happen. (i used to cut hair and i can honestly tell you that i cut three peoples ears that i can think of and one of them was a gentleman who's ear bled for almost 3 minutes straight and came back the next day to have his haircut finished). sometimes you can't go to at-home groomers (no offense to those of you who work out of your home and actually do your job). but anyway, i'll get off my soapbox...lol

now to get to the bad things at work... there are a few that i can think of.. there was a chinese powderpuff mix that belonged to a well established doctor that was so matted that he had to be shaved with a 15 in places and when i got the matts off he was so skinny there was a lot of skin pulling/stretching that i had to do to get the hair off. when we confronted the owner about it his wife said the breed is supposed to be skinny... i was in tears... i felt so sorry for the dog and he still comes in at times, and still skinny

then there was a lab/poo mix named dixie. when she came in it looked like she had mud caked to her hair. on further inspection it was ticks. i pulled ticks off for over an hour and a half. i actually had other people helping me at one point. there were THOUSANDS of ticks on her and i'm not playing it up any. there was so much blood on her and the table that customers were beginning to ask questions. when i called the owner to tell her about it she said that she knew and that she would come and pick her up to take her to the vet. when she got to my salon i found out that she lived in the "nice" part of town and dixie lived in her backyard that the woman allowed her children to play in! she said she hadn't bombed her yard yet or gotten her dog on a preventative because she hadn't thought about it. she was just going to get rid of her and thought that might get rid of the ticks. i was so upset i didn't want the dog to go home with her!

then there was a poodle that i groomed that was so matted that he hadn't been able to "go" properly and had a(excuse my wording) turd stuck half-way in. i had to pull it just to finish the groom!

then my last story just happened recently. there was a matted schnauzer that came in and it didn't look any different than any of the other matted dogs that come in daily. when i shaved him down he smelt funny and had a weird color to him... he was GREEN! he had mildew all over him. and he was an inside dog! the owner said she had been bathing him almost every day and with the matts that he had he probably hadn't had dry skin in weeks.

i've never seen maggots or larvae or any of that... only matts, ticks, fleas, ingrown nails, and mildew. i've only been grooming for almost two years though so i'm sure not too long from now i'll have some more stories

[Love's_Sophie]

I had a Frenchie in recently that had two severely ingrown nails...The nails were encased with the pads...I had to peel the pads away from the nail in order to snip the nails off...poor girl! It's not that she isn't in very often either; we see these guys (there are two of them) pretty much every month...her nails just grew in really quickly this time, and their owners had been gone for a time, and someone else had been watching them...

[GroovyGroomer777]

So sad....

Yet as we undo the months of neglect, many of the owners have nothing to say except that they are angry you cut their dog's hair too short.

[blackrose]

Here is what I just had happen recentally...

Four puppies (all under six months) came in to get a bath. They were from the humane society and had been there for around, eh, two months. These puppies were caked from head to toe in POOP. The smell was enough to send you gagging. Two of the pups were short hair, two were long hair. The short haired dogs had cuts on their pads, one had mange, and the poop was almost a tar like consistancy on their hind ends. One was underweight. The long haired dogs were not only one solid mat, but had poop meshed into the mats. I pulled a chunk of plastic out of one of the girls' fur. All of the dogs had long nails that were withering away because of the filth they were in. I scrubbed them each for a good half hour, and they still reeked.

I can not get over how disgusted I am. These were puppies from a SHELTER that is SUPPOSED to CARE for their dogs, not let them sit in their own filth for two months! How do you report neglect when the people doing the neglecting is the shelter!

[Love's_Sophie]

Ouch...That just makes me cringe to visualize that.

One of the towns I lived in, and actually adopted a few pets from, has been heading down that kind of a road too, especially where the cats are concerned. I'm not against no-kill shelters, but this shelter is housing cats with FIP and FIV (etc), right next to healthy cats; Now, these are illnesses that CAN NOT be cured and are extremely contagious, and yet they are trying to keep them alive and get them adopted out, while the rest of the cats are exposed to the illness, because there is no where else to keep the sick cats. It makes me sick... I know it's hard to put an animal to sleep, but when you are risking the health of other cats??? They also keep dogs that are unadoptable (due to illness, or unchecked aggression, or age-and not 'healthy' old dogs either), and turn away younger dogs who have an excellent chance of being adopted if given the chance. The vet clinic I had worked at in the town, wound up with all the 'overflow' dogs and cats, and sadly, many of them had to be put down, because they didn't have room for all of them either, and certainly couldn't keep them forever, because that's not what they were there for.

[jfinner1]

I'm not a groomer myself, but I have a habit of taking in any animal that needs help, so I have two stories.

The first is from when I was a kid, about 14-15. I found this dog wandering around the woods behind our house, that kinda looked like Benji. He was so matted that the mats were starting to pull his skin apart. We didn't own electric clippers, or if we did, my mom wouldn't let me use them, so over the course of three days I cut away at this poor dog with a pair or scissors. When I finally got all his fur cut away the best I could, you could just see the fleas crawling all over him! Plus he had some sores cause by the mats, I think, that luckily weren't infected. I took 5 flea baths to get all the fleas off of him! When he was finally clean, I realized that he was white and cream, not brown! Poor guy was such a good sport about the whole thing. I later found his owner, which was really good. He'd been missing for over a month, and everyone thought he was dead!

The second happened a few months ago. One of my good friend's parents are going through a messy divorce. They can't fight over the kids, since they're all grown up, so instead, they're fighting over the pets. Well, the one that won custody of the rabbit had never really taken care of the rabbit before. Within a month of having him, she started noticing some bunny-allergies. After two months, she couldn't go near the cage, and had to have a friend come over to feed him. That's when my friend called me, and I offered to take the rabbit, Patrick. When I got him, he was filthy. He was insanely overweight to the point that he couldn't clean his own hind-quarters. He had hock-sores on both of his back legs that were starting to get infected, as well as badly inflamed skin on and around his butt and genitalia. It took a week of butt-baths to get the area clean, and a few months before he dropped enough weight to clean himself... Poor guy. At least I know he's much better off now!

[PaintedPretty33]

Wow, it's for those very reasons that I bathe my dog regularly and she sees a groomer in the summer. She HATES being brushed, and I mean hates it... she gets mats behind her ears and on her back legs... she's a working dog with longer hair so I just have her shaved in the summer... she is so much cooler and easier to keep clean. I'd do it in the winter also, but she's freeze! Baby shampoo is an awesome thing on a dog... keeps their coat soft and helps with tangles and mats and it's great for dogs with sensitive skin.

I'm gonna start tipping the crap out of my groomer!

[PlushPupsGirl]

The worst i have ever seen was a little mini schnauzer that came in and his entire coat was matted to his body in a thick layer of urine, feces and dirt. You could not even see or feel his body under the coat. The woman DARED to ask us to put him into a schnauzer cut!!! We blatantly told her that there is no way we could do anything but shave everything. even the coat on his face was as matted as the rest of his body! Apparently he had had a UTI for a while which the owner of course didn't know. The dog just reeked of bodily fluids....

I have to let you know that we have this thing called the Wall of Shame, where we hang up things we have found on dogs, or cats, bodies, pictures if nothing else. Well we shaved the dog down and the entire coat STAYED TOGETHER, so we had this thick blanket of his fur left and we laminated it and stuck it on the wall along with the owners name. It may seem mean, but we tell the owner that if the dog comes in next time and doesn't look like that their name will be taken down but the coat will still be there. Needless to say, it really does work...

[blackrose]

Here were the pups I bathed.

This photo is of Aladdin and Jasmine, pre bath:


Post bath of Aladdin:


Post bath of Jasmine:


This is Star, one of the short haired dogs:


The other short hair, the one with mange, (my favorite) was taken off of petfinder and I saw her Monday back in at work over in the vet section. I hope she got adopted.

I might just stop by the shelter sometime this week and say hi to them. They were such good little pups. Jasmine's attitude reminded me so much of Chloe. LOL

[killbride]

we just apply a cooling agent and wait a few minutes in between sessions, kinda like a dentist a guess, lol

What kind of cooling do you use?

[SMoore]

This was probably the worst, the dog was matted, covered in fleas and smelled awful.

[tismyself]

I have seen a chow that had come in for diarrhea. They had asked about grooming prices for when he was 'better'. Well there was no better. The dog was infested with maggots. They were literally eating the flesh from the inside out. That was the worst I've ever seen. Words cannot describe. I don't know how they didn't notice it. His skin, once you looked into the under coat, was crawling. It was bad, and I'm saying this compared to I have seen working in a hospital treating severe nursing home abuse cases involving stage 4 bedsores.

I've seen a dog so pelted his legs were matted to his body and his ears were matted to his head. He could barely move. Nails were about an inch and a half long AFTER the techs trimmed them back on the check in. They couldn't get further until the pelt and feces were clear.

Seen a dog pelted and when the groomer started shaving him we found he was covered in fleas under all the matting. He was anemic and had to have a blood transfusion.

Not the worst but so sad..a standard white poodle, sweet as anything, came in for his OAY shave down. It took nearly two hours and looked like a sheep shearing. It came off all in one piece and looked like a sheep-fleece rug, albeit filthy as all get out.

[Graco22]

Here's poor Gus, who hadn't been professionally groomed in a year and a half. His owner hacks at the back coat now and then, and he of course has just terrible allergies and skin. He felt SO much better when he was done. Poor old guy.

[agility collie mom]

I must say a good groomer is worth their weight in gold! I love my groomer. She is awesome. Working for a vet I can't tell you some of the terrible, neglectful owners that come in. (Maggots, mats, skin infections, dogs with "cat claws" etc.) We try to encourage them to have their pets groomed on a regular basis but.....

[GroovyGroomer777]

OMG...the nails on poor Gus...that is just... <sigh>

You are such a mean groomer for shaving that poor dog !!