Vet Tech Tales: The Early Years (11 page)

Please Check Under the Hood –
Er
, Tail

After my first meeting with Susie and Mrs. Van Buren, I was headed back to the kennel when Joan, holding a black Chow on a leash, stopped me. “Phoenix, will you take Samson to the back for me? He needs a bath and
brushout
. And check his tail end. Mr. Jackson says he’s been biting his rump.”

I took the leash and peered down at Samson. He was a handsome-looking Chow with a full coat and friendly disposition. He had a few mats, but overall the hair situation didn’t look too bad. We walked to the kennel and, before I put him in a cage, I ran my hand up the back of his thighs and against the fur in front of the full tail that curled tightly over his back. Rump biting in the summer usually means fleas, but I didn’t immediately see any, although the black coat and black skin did make spotting black fleas a bit of a challenge.

Samson turned his head to give my hand a lick and smiled at me, ready to play. I patted his shoulder,
then
tugged on his tail, lifting the plume up and away from where it curled over his back. At once I knew the patch of white where tail met body should not have been there. I knelt down beside Samson and pushed his tail out of the way to get a better look. The white patch moved.

“
Ewww
!”
Within a circle about the size of a silver dollar, a couple of dozen short, plump bodies wriggled. Instinctively, I knew what they were.
“Maggots!”

Charla
came hurrying over. “
Ewww
,” she echoed. The expression on her face validated my first “official” diagnosis. “Get him in the tub, and I’ll go get one of the doctors to take a look.”

Dr. Reese ambled in bearing plastic gloves and tweezers. She scooped out a
palmful
of the larvae, revealing raw, pink tissue beneath. “He probably had a hot spot under that bushy tail and a fly laid her eggs in the wound.” She ran the tweezers just under the skin at the edge of the wound and fished out a couple more of the fat white beasts. “Use the spray head to flush out that wound real good. Then put some antibiotic cream on it after he’s been bathed. We’ll send him home with some of the cream, and he should be good to go.”

Another lesson learned. Even a well-kept dog could have hot spots and maggots. The owner had been concerned enough to notice the dog acting strangely, but simply hadn’t been astute enough to diagnose the problem himself. It’s easy to fault the owner in such situations, but sometimes even the most diligent of us can overlook the obvious.

 
“I’ll take care of him,”
Charla
told me. “Why don’t you start brushing out Sasha?”

I picked up the Himalayan she pointed to. The big, gentle cat reminded me of a long-haired
sealpoint
Siamese. As I worked on getting Sasha’s fur detangled, I kept one eye on
Charla
, watching as she ran the water over the area where the maggots had been living off of Samson’s wound.
Charla
didn’t strike me as overly knowledgeable about medicine or as someone who even wanted to be, but she was industrious and kind, and certainly seemed competent in the back room. In fact, she reminded me a lot of how Kathy had been. Was this, then, the model of the veterinary assistant?

I aspired to more. But was there anything more between helping in the kennel and being a veterinarian?
Another stepping stone?
At the time, I had no idea a new plan was brewing at the state level that would acknowledge the existence of that stepping-stone position. I only knew that while I was thrilled to be in the company of animals once again, one day soon I would wake up and resent having to clean another cage or dip another dog if something more challenging wasn’t waiting on the near horizon.

In the meantime, there was Sasha to bathe and Max to clip.

Personality Cuts Both Ways

Max was a 30-pound terrier mix who looked like he had a healthy dose of Lhasa
Apso
in him. He was a happy dog with a perpetual smile and a matted coat.

“Personality cut for the summer,” Joan had said when she deposited him into a cage.

A “personality cut” referred to the standard way all of Dr. Norris’ staff clipped any dog’s coat that needed extensive grooming. Dr. Norris certainly wasn’t going to pay to have a professional groomer on staff, but by the same token he wasn’t going turn away another source of profit. So, for those animals who didn’t have a regular groomer but were needing to be clipped down because of mats or fleas or just wanting to be kept cool in summer, we clipped them down close over their body between the base of the tail and the base of the ears. The tail we trimmed with scissors to avoid a nude, “rat tail” appearance. But the ears and head demanded some artistry. That’s where the “personality” part came into play. Fluffy eyebrows or that plucked appearance?
A
scraggle
of beard or a clean-shaven chin?
Mostly it was mutts needing our attention, so we looked at the dog’s face and tried to decide what breed it looked most like. Then we used scissors to trim their heads to match that image. I had given the personality cut to maybe a dozen dogs during my volunteer days, and I believed I had a flair for turning scraggly into cute.
And sometimes even scruffy into classy.

For a dog like Max who started out with a cute-as-a-button expression and a solid breed dominance, clipping was simply a matter of turning him into a shaved-down version of himself.
Eyebrows?
Definitely.
And even a bit of extra overhang across his eye ridge. Where an elegant poodle might get a clean-shaven muzzle with a simple mustache, Max’s face demanded curly hair over his whole nose, a drooping mustache, and just a hint of beard under his chin. I feathered his cheek hair gradually so that the hairline made a smooth transition from hairy face to closely trimmed body. A bath, blow-dry and fluff and he was ready to go. For some dogs, even the standard personality cut transforms them into an animal often unrecognized by their owners. But Max still looked pretty much like Max, just with a new easy-care coat and a tamed-down face. I scooped him off the grooming table and placed him in a cage, where he promptly sat and barked for attention each time someone walked by.

When his owner came for him, I paraded him out to the waiting room. I had already come to expect the double-take from most owners as they realized the animal I held was theirs. They would usually chuckle at the
transformation,
fuss a bit over their pup and off they’d go. If they didn’t like the cut, we generally never heard about it. It was just hair, it would grow back. And the cut served its purpose to detangle,
demat
or cool.

Max’s owner did the double-take, but no chuckle followed. I offered her Max’s leash and waited expectantly. Maybe she was just shy.

“What did you do to him?” The distress in her voice was clear. And no, she wasn’t shy at all.

How to answer? “You wanted him trimmed for the summer, right?”

“He’s ugly!”

The little dog at my feet waved his tail and looked up at us from behind a nicely defined line of eyebrows. He cocked his head. I knew just how he felt.

Behind the reception desk, Joan rose smoothly and peeked over the counter at Max. “
Aww
, how can you call that face ugly?”

“This wasn’t what I agreed to when I left him here.” Max’s owner’s face shifted into a stubborn scowl.

I was still dangling Max’s leash out for her to take, quite unsure of any response. In the past, I’d heard both Joan and Dr. Norris describe exactly what we were going to do when giving dogs a personality cut. They never failed to mention it wouldn’t be a professional grooming and always reminded the owners they weren’t paying a professional grooming fee either. I couldn’t fathom either of them not going over the same spiel with Max’s owner. Besides, Joan was right. Not even my efforts could turn a dog as naturally cute as Max into an ugly monster.

“I’m not paying for
that
!”

And there it was.
The indignant customer refusing to pay.
Not because the work was shoddy or the service defective, but because they wanted something for nothing. It wouldn’t have mattered what Max looked like; she had brought him in knowing she was going to complain about the finished results and expecting a discount at the very least or free service if she lobbied hard enough. How do you counter someone whose
fall-back
would be
the customer’s always right
?

To begin with, you set up a system where the customer pays before their animal is brought out to them. Max’s owner had already paid the bill; what she was positioning for was a refund. Thankfully, Joan had experience handling such folk. If Max’s owner expected to intimidate Joan into a refund, she didn’t know our office manager. Besides, even if she got past Joan, there was still a Type
A
, alpha male in the house to contend with.

Joan smiled sweetly. “What exactly
were
you expecting?”

“Not
that
.” Max’s owner put as much contempt into her tone as she could. What she didn’t deliver was a real answer to the question.

“The dog’s been trimmed down – enough to get all his mats out but not enough to get sunburned. Dogs with skin as fair as his can sunburn easily here in Texas, you know. Then, if you remember, you brought him in with a lot of mats in his moustache and around his face. They had to be cut out, so we did have to give Max’s face a shorter trim. If you were expecting us to leave his hair longer, then you’ll need to keep him brushed out better before you bring him in for his next cut.”

And from Joan, I learned the art of turning the problem back onto the customer, making it Max’s owner’s fault for forcing the cuts we made.

Max’s owner snatched the leash from me. “There won’t be a next time!” And off she went in a great and exaggerated huff.

“I sure hope not.” Joan, of course, waited till the owner was out of earshot to express what I was feeling.

I snickered. But I was still unsure of myself enough that I had to ask, “Did I really do a bad job?”

Joan looked at me square on. “What do
you
think?”

How is it that some people are so naturally deft at handling social situations and knowing exactly what other people need? Not only had Joan demonstrated how to handle a customer complaint by being polite and reasonable, she was now forcing me to confront my doubts myself. She could have easily brushed off my question by assuring me I’d done well and gone on about her business. What she did was encourage me to have faith in my own work.