Some People!

I had a reallllllly bad day at work Saturday. It all started before we even opened for business. I was just finishing cleaning up and waiting for eleven to open the doors when I heard the bell go off. The door had been unlocked to admit grooming clients, but our groomer forgot to lock it back up. I went up front and was confronted by a woman. She had put an application in on a Lhasa Apso that we have. She didn't put down a deposit though. When that happens, we check references and then call the adopter once their application is approved to set up a pick up time.

"I'm here to pick up Daisy. I'm ********." she says. I look at her app. She had listed three veterinarians as her personal and vet references. We had called them on Thursday and left messages for all of them. Vets are notoriously hard to get a hold of and none of them had called us back. I told her as much. She then made me call two of them again. One didn't answer and one was in an appointment.

Now she is getting mad. She claims that my boss told her to pick Daisy up today and that she drove forty miles to get here. I tell her that I am sorry, I don't know why she was told that but that I can't send the dog home without any references. She yells at me for a little. I apologize again and tell her that we can call her when we have her application approved so that we don't have this mix up again.

She leans forward and hisses, "I am not the right person to piss off."

I stare her straight in the eye and say, "That's unfortunate, but I still can't send this dog home with you at the moment."

"Keep her then. Idiots."

My boss was in back and I was shaking when I went to go tell her what happened. My boss had never told her to come in today, and told me that this woman is a dog training columnist for our local paper.

"She has some good advice," she tells me. Then looking at me, smiles and says, "but she is pretty old school." It is common knowledge that I am in the R+ camp and pretty passionate about it.

It made me think, when you regularly use force to get what you want out of dogs, does that begin to boil over into your interactions with people?

This is an excerpt from her website, "I don’t teach clicker training in my dog training classes. Not because I don’t think it works, it does, if you’re a professional trainer. Clicker training takes a certain skill that most people don’t have. It’s a timing thing. The average dog owner just doesn’t have it."

*Snort* I'm glad she isn't adopting a dog from us.

Daisy dog. She deserves better.