Another crazy client story!
Sep. 23rd, 2006 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
draggonlaadyThis is the return of a woman I've had the misfortune to deal with on several occassions, though I don't think I've written to you about her yet. We shall call her Cracked. Because she is. Cracked has several very large, completely untrained Newfoundlands, which she is incapable of controlling. She is also apparently incapable of understanding why this would frustrate the people around her. In her credit, she's recently found new homes for some of the dogs, and is down to 3--an older, evil, intact male, and 2 bitches.
Yesterday, she showed up immediately after lunch (no appointment), let all three dogs out of the car (no leashes on any of them of course!) herds the whole lot into the lobby (without bothering to check for other clients and smaller beasties first). With the help of a technician, she rodeos the chaos into an exam room. Now, I want to point out that this level of chaos was only attainable by SEDATING THE FUCK OUT OF ALL THREE DOGS BEFORE BRINGING THEM IN. She'd given all of them a heavy dose of acepromazine so that they could be groomed that morning. Usually when she shows up, she turns the dogs loose and they run in different directions--towards other clients, towards the highway, towards other people's cars, etc. Well no, I suppose i don't really mean usually--she does this EVERY TIME she comes in.
Anyway. I'm supposed to be evaluating the male for a lameness. So I walk into the exam room to talk to Cracked. Seems that Evil has been limping for 2 weeks now, and the groomer pulled a big wad of "like hair, but hard, I mean completely solid" stuff out from between the "hoof parts of the foot" he's been limping on. (Hoof parts? when did dogs get hooves?) And now he's walking a lot better, but the owner doesn't think that was why he was limping. Because he's still limping, you see. "And it's not a... what do you call it? Chick weed?" "Cheat grass." "Yeah...that... it's not that because the groomer didn't find any in his feet." Right. Your dog runs loose on 100 acres of dirt and trees and he's never come in contact with cheat grass. Yup, I believe that.
Evil has already been fitted with a muzzle before I entered the room. But when I bend over to look at him, the OTHER dogs growl at me. So I ask Cracked to put the other dogs back in the car so that we only have to deal with the one that's got the problem. "Well, he won't like that--it'll upset him to be apart from them." He's drugged, lady. So're they. And I'm going to upset him a whole lot more by poking and prodding at his sore foot. And it's going to upset ME a LOT MORE THAN THAT if one of those other dogs bites me for doing it. So put them back in the car. And for once, she actually does it. Hurray.
So I try to see what lameness she's talking about. I ask her to walk the dog in a straight line across the lobby and back so I can watch him walk. She goes three steps out and comes back. I ask her to go all the way across the lobby, in a straight line. She goes in a circle, with herself between me and the dog. In 5 minutes of trying to get her to understand the concept of "walk the dog away from me, turn around, walk back towards me in a sraight line" I probably actually see the dog take 3 steps. At this point, I give up. Too much risk with having this dog (who's still not on a leash--we've discovered in the past that if we give Cracked leashes for the dogs, she simply puts the leashes on and then drops them, letting the dogs run around dragging the leash) loose in the lobby with other clients potentially arriving and people walking through is not worth the effort. So I round up the technician (the only one--the receptionist is at lunch and the other technician's sick), and we take the dog and Cracked into the back room to put him up on the table. I lower the hydraulic table (yay! I don't have to lift the 200+ pound dog!), and tell her that I want him on the table, pointing "this way" (which was punctuated with body language to indicate that i want the dog facing me). She looks at the non-hydraulic table--"You want us to lift him clear up there?" No. No, I want you to lead him onto THIS table, (which is 4" off the ground) and face him into the room. "Oh. Which way do you want him facing?"
Right. Skipping the rest of that--we eventually get the dog on the table, facing the correct direction, raise the table and lay him over on his side. Dog growls at me several times, but Cracked is much more concerned about the cat in the kennel behind her who's quite cranky while waking up from anesthetic. She goes off on a diatribe about how the cat has a bad attitude and her dog is so sweet and well behaved. I do my best to ignore her while looking at the dog. So then she asks the technician about "what do you call it? Chick weed?" To which the technician replies "Cheat grass". "Right. That. What's it look like, anyway?" Technician points to the seeds I'm collecting from between the dog's toes. "It looks just like that." I remove several cheat grass seeds and several small matts from the dog's feet. (I'm not dissing on the groomer here--I'm sure the feet were much worse before she got to them, and that she did her best with the evil beast and only Cracked to hold him still for her.) Show the owner where the bottom of one of his feet has a sore on it, which is probably where the groomer pulled the matt from earlier. Cracked wanders off on a verbal tangent, redescribing the matt and speculating on what it was (probably hair and pitch, which I've told her 3 times already at this point), and NOW she thinks that might be why the dog's been limping. But she doesn't decide that until after I go through the analogy of having a rock in your shoe and how your foot is still bruised after you take the rock out...
Yesterday, she showed up immediately after lunch (no appointment), let all three dogs out of the car (no leashes on any of them of course!) herds the whole lot into the lobby (without bothering to check for other clients and smaller beasties first). With the help of a technician, she rodeos the chaos into an exam room. Now, I want to point out that this level of chaos was only attainable by SEDATING THE FUCK OUT OF ALL THREE DOGS BEFORE BRINGING THEM IN. She'd given all of them a heavy dose of acepromazine so that they could be groomed that morning. Usually when she shows up, she turns the dogs loose and they run in different directions--towards other clients, towards the highway, towards other people's cars, etc. Well no, I suppose i don't really mean usually--she does this EVERY TIME she comes in.
Anyway. I'm supposed to be evaluating the male for a lameness. So I walk into the exam room to talk to Cracked. Seems that Evil has been limping for 2 weeks now, and the groomer pulled a big wad of "like hair, but hard, I mean completely solid" stuff out from between the "hoof parts of the foot" he's been limping on. (Hoof parts? when did dogs get hooves?) And now he's walking a lot better, but the owner doesn't think that was why he was limping. Because he's still limping, you see. "And it's not a... what do you call it? Chick weed?" "Cheat grass." "Yeah...that... it's not that because the groomer didn't find any in his feet." Right. Your dog runs loose on 100 acres of dirt and trees and he's never come in contact with cheat grass. Yup, I believe that.
Evil has already been fitted with a muzzle before I entered the room. But when I bend over to look at him, the OTHER dogs growl at me. So I ask Cracked to put the other dogs back in the car so that we only have to deal with the one that's got the problem. "Well, he won't like that--it'll upset him to be apart from them." He's drugged, lady. So're they. And I'm going to upset him a whole lot more by poking and prodding at his sore foot. And it's going to upset ME a LOT MORE THAN THAT if one of those other dogs bites me for doing it. So put them back in the car. And for once, she actually does it. Hurray.
So I try to see what lameness she's talking about. I ask her to walk the dog in a straight line across the lobby and back so I can watch him walk. She goes three steps out and comes back. I ask her to go all the way across the lobby, in a straight line. She goes in a circle, with herself between me and the dog. In 5 minutes of trying to get her to understand the concept of "walk the dog away from me, turn around, walk back towards me in a sraight line" I probably actually see the dog take 3 steps. At this point, I give up. Too much risk with having this dog (who's still not on a leash--we've discovered in the past that if we give Cracked leashes for the dogs, she simply puts the leashes on and then drops them, letting the dogs run around dragging the leash) loose in the lobby with other clients potentially arriving and people walking through is not worth the effort. So I round up the technician (the only one--the receptionist is at lunch and the other technician's sick), and we take the dog and Cracked into the back room to put him up on the table. I lower the hydraulic table (yay! I don't have to lift the 200+ pound dog!), and tell her that I want him on the table, pointing "this way" (which was punctuated with body language to indicate that i want the dog facing me). She looks at the non-hydraulic table--"You want us to lift him clear up there?" No. No, I want you to lead him onto THIS table, (which is 4" off the ground) and face him into the room. "Oh. Which way do you want him facing?"
Right. Skipping the rest of that--we eventually get the dog on the table, facing the correct direction, raise the table and lay him over on his side. Dog growls at me several times, but Cracked is much more concerned about the cat in the kennel behind her who's quite cranky while waking up from anesthetic. She goes off on a diatribe about how the cat has a bad attitude and her dog is so sweet and well behaved. I do my best to ignore her while looking at the dog. So then she asks the technician about "what do you call it? Chick weed?" To which the technician replies "Cheat grass". "Right. That. What's it look like, anyway?" Technician points to the seeds I'm collecting from between the dog's toes. "It looks just like that." I remove several cheat grass seeds and several small matts from the dog's feet. (I'm not dissing on the groomer here--I'm sure the feet were much worse before she got to them, and that she did her best with the evil beast and only Cracked to hold him still for her.) Show the owner where the bottom of one of his feet has a sore on it, which is probably where the groomer pulled the matt from earlier. Cracked wanders off on a verbal tangent, redescribing the matt and speculating on what it was (probably hair and pitch, which I've told her 3 times already at this point), and NOW she thinks that might be why the dog's been limping. But she doesn't decide that until after I go through the analogy of having a rock in your shoe and how your foot is still bruised after you take the rock out...
