I frequently write about my dog Nadi, I hope this isn't too boring for those of you out there reading these things. It's just that other than TV and occasionally doing some exercise, that is basically my entire life in a shell.
It took me getting a Shih-Tzu mixed breed dog to find out that there are two kinds of dogs out there in the world. One kind has fur and this is most dogs. This naturally sheds and falls out once the fur gets to a certain length. You never need to cut this sort of dog's hair unless you are trying to do something creative.
The other type of dog has "hair" and Nadi is one of those types of dog. If you do not cut this sort of dog's hair it will just continue to grow and grow much like the hair on all of our heads. The benefit of this is that you don't have hair all over your house all the time like you would with a shedding dog. The downside is that you have to either do the work yourself in cutting it and making your dog look rather silly because you don't know what you are doing, or you have to pay a salon to do it for you once a month or so.
Recently I came to the realization that I believe the salon I go to is hitting my dog while she is there getting a haircut and this is not ok with me at all. My dog is very well behaved but just like most dogs, she would prefer to not get a haircut ever. That doesn't mean that you need to abuse her to get the job done. If I was there and witnessed this I would likely have to go to prison with the beating I would have delivered the the person cutting her hair. Nobody gets to hit my dog except me and I have only had to do that twice in her life.
So this time I paid extra to have the technician come to my house while I sat in the other room playing videogames. No groomer is going to smack your dog around while you are in the other room so things went smoothly and even though this was around 30% more expensive than what I have paid in the past, I felt a lot more at ease than if she was off in some facility without any sort of oversight.
I decided this was a good idea to spend the extra money when the last time I took Nadi to the groomers she was crying, jumping up on me, and hiding behind my legs growling at one groomer in particular. Nadi really likes most people so I thought to myself that this young man must really deserve the sort of treatment that my dog was giving him. I reluctantly left her there anyway but when I came back to pick her up she was shaking with excitement to get out of there. This would be the last time I would ever go to that place and I have told other people to avoid it as well. There is no excuse to treat animals this way especially not my animal.
So I found an in-house technician and it is totally worth it if you are a nervous pet owner like I am.
It was important that I not be in the room so the technician told me because it is a lot more difficult if the dog thinks that all they have to do is run to you for safety. It's ok, I was only about 12 feet away from her during the entire thing but she could not see me. It was all over in about 90 minutes and Nadi got lots of treats and the total package cost me 500,000 VND which is just over $20. I think that is a huge value and I am sure this process costs significantly more in the west.
This is the end result and I am quite happy with it. I decided to cut the cute ear hair back a bit because every time we go for walks she just ends up dragging her ears through all the filth on the street anyway.
What do you think? It's a vast improvement isn't it? Nadi doesn't care what she looks like and if it was left up to her she would never get a haircut even if it means that she can't see anything.