Lockdown led to a boom in people buying puppies, and animal-loving Britons now spend £3.8bn a year treating them to a day at the spa. What does that say about our changing relationship with man’s best friend?
‘I’m not going to get any dog in a headlock. These are beings that are alive. I’m not running a torture chamber.” Stuart Simons, 48, is a dog groomer and co-founder of Tails of St Leonards, which, at mid-morning on a Friday, is extremely busy but surprisingly quiet. That’s because the Afghan hound they call Zorro has not yet arrived. Ernie, a six-year-old racing greyhound until he retired, had never seen a ball; he is here to get his nails done. Bear is also six, a bernese mountain dog with a (step) brother, Sully, of the same breed, and they both need grooming every three months. If they get dirty in between, their owner puts a swimming costume on and walks them into the shower. If you knew how big these dogs are, you, too, would find that image difficult to shake. I’m still a bit puzzled about the swimming costume. Does your dog mind if you’re naked? Amber is a cockapoo that goes wild with joy whenever she sees a man, but cockapoos always have a really strong opinion about something.
Then there’s Simons’ own dog, a standard poodle called Ralph, and his colleague Maria Pratley’s cockapoo, Oscar. Oscar had such bad separation anxiety that, when she is washing another dog, he has to lie underneath the bath. Otis, a cavapoochon (part cavalier king charles spaniel, part poodle, part bichon frise) is biddable, as a third groomer, Sophie Humphrey, shaves him back to glory, but his eyes keep asking: “Why? Why does it matter what my tail looks like?” Simons is under no illusions about his profession: “People say, ‘I’ve booked him in for a treat, for a spa day,’ but dogs don’t want to be here. They’d rather be out and about.” Nonetheless, they need these visits, because a matted life is miserable. Grooming is a serious, and also very big, business.
