By Bonnie Wonders-Trent
Into everyone’s life a little crazy must fall. In my case, the crazy would be a Yorkie named Daisy. Or as we know her, “Crazy Daisy.” You know the type. This dog is a true adrenalin junkie. Her owner brings her in and she is climbing his shoulder and panting like I used to when I’d see a hot guy coming out of the gym. Not that I ever attended a gym…just remembering the times when I would be sitting on a bench eating ice cream ACROSS from the gym.
Anyhow, Daisy is a truly hyper dog from the minute she is dropped off at the grooming shop. She goes crazy in the bath, biting at the water coming from the hose as she is being washed. She bites the hose itself if it gets within her reach. If she weren’t tied down in the tub, she’d easily become as airborne as a Flying Walenda as she made a break for her escape.
It’s always a fight trying to dry her at all with the drying towels. She grabs onto one end of it as I try toweling her off. More than once she’s managed to nearly crush my finger as she grabs hold of a part of the towel that contains part of said finger. All I can say is “YEOWW.” Ok…and sometimes a swear word too.
She fights the force dryer tooth and nail (literally) even though I do everything short of hobbling her, which I’ve often thought I might try adding to the routine. No matter how many hoodie things I put over her ears, the result is always the same. As predictable as clockwork, if I turn the dryer on as low as I can, she will do that scream thing that is usually only reserved for Schnauzers. If I turn it up higher, that will immediately cause a severe bout of diarrhea. I don’t even have to begin to explain what that’s like if you don’t see it happening and inadvertently hit it with a force dryer on high. “Clean up at table one,” I immediately hear in that imaginary voice in my head.
Clipping is as much of a nightmare as it could possibly be. She is so terribly ticklish that when I start going down her sides with the clipper, she starts scratching her stomach so violently that she is in perfect rhythm with the old classic “Wipeout.” If we could attach some little drumsticks to her feet we’d make a million using her for a backup musician on a hip-hop cd. She pulls her legs in so tightly to her body when I get anywhere near them with the clippers and makes “fists” out of her paws. I’ve had an easier time prying apart the wings on the frozen holiday turkey, than the legs on this dog’s body.
She also hates having her ears messed with. Although she doesn’t grow much in the way of hair inside them, when I pluck out the few that are in there, she lets out a wail that would make you think that an air raid is eminent.
Lastly, when Daisy’s all finished being groomed, need I even mention how much she despises being put into a cage to wait for her owner? With the rapid fire incessant barking that she does, it amazes me that she doesn’t get laryngitis. But I swear the second her owner’s car pulls up, the barking stops. How she knows it’s his car, I can’t explain, seeing as how she is so loud it’s amazing she doesn’t deafen herself.
Each time, her owner asks me how she did. My answer is pretty much always the same. I tell him the truth: that she’s a devil to do, hates every part of the grooming process and is one of the noisiest, most hyper dogs that I groom. But for some reason, I really like this dog. I haven’t a clue as to why I am so fond of her. I’ve always thought her to be one of the “not so bright bulbs in the canine world.” Her owner constantly tells me how smart she is, how many words she knows, how wonderful she is at home and so on. Of course I never believed him. The dog is just way too wired to be able to calm down enough to use a brain if she truly had one.
The last time I groomed her, Kyle mentioned that he had shot a video of Daisy and posted it on You Tube. I smiled when he told me. “Go to Daisy Smart Yorkie,” he told me. I forgot about it for several weeks. Suddenly for some reason one night I remembered him telling me to look at it. Lo and behold, I looked up the video and was totally blown away. I found myself watching an EXTREMELY smart little Yorkie, well behaved, calm as could be, fetching toys out of a pile as her owner asked for them by name. Each one, the dog correctly identified and brought to Kyle’s wife. They claim she knows something like 50 words, I believe.
Look it up on You Tube for yourself. I think I’ll mention that taping some mini drumsticks to her back feet thing though. She needs an agent…