Mike O’Hallaron of Frontenac, Missouri, is distraught. “We have a 7-year-old goldendoodle named Princess who has always been petrified of getting bathed,” he writes. “We arranged for a mobile rig to come to the house, and she froze and refused to go in. When she knows she is going to the local groomer, she starts whimpering and shaking. I don’t know if she is afraid of water, or if the cleaning tools bother her ears. Any advice you give would be greatly appreciated.”
Mr. O’Hallaron, you are hardly alone in having a dog with an inexplic- able fear. Many dog owners contact us with the worry that their pet can’t tolerate something that ordinarily wouldn’t feel scary. But there’s always a reason, even if we can’t discern it.
In Princess’s case, it could be the water that’s unnerving her, the sound of the trimmer used to cut her curls, or instruments such as the hair dryer or electric nail cutters. Perhaps just the fact that she’s out of your hands for these “treatments” may frighten her. She may have had a negative experience with a groomer or someone else when she was young, or something may have happened that she perceived as negative, and the impression it left on her could have been inadvertently missed by you. Whether or not that experience went under your radar, it might have left her sensitized to being handled by others for cleaning and such.
It can be hard to work backwards to figure out what has made a dog nervous so you can strategize to gradually desensitize her, but sometimes there are ways around that. Have you thought about hiring someone to come bathe and groom Princess in your home? That alone may do a lot to ratchet down the anxiety. If you’re right there and both you and the groomer are praising her for her cooperation and perhaps rewarding her with some delicious treats, the whimpering and shaking may largely cease.
Another option would be to take her to a local do-it-yourself dog washing establishment that at least allows you to bathe your pet on your own. The tubs are often raised so you don’t have to do a lot of bending and struggling, and Princess may feel more relaxed with you washing her rather than someone else. A quick search of businesses in your area yielded a number of self-serve dog-bathing options: Wag n Wash, Sudsy’s Muddy Paw Wash, U-Do-It Dog Wash, and so on.
You can even learn to trim your pet’s fur, although that takes longer, as well as trim her nails. And you might find that one kind of nail clipper proves less frightening than another.
However you solve the problem, Princess will adapt more successfully if you go gradually. She doesn’t have to have all her nails trimmed at once, for instance. Nor does she need to have all her hair clipped at the same time. For bathing, perhaps start by just wiping her sides with a warm, wet washcloth and see how she does.
All through, speak cooingly to her, praising her for any cooperation she can muster and dispensing morsels that she absolutely loves as you go along. That will help her come to see grooming as something rewarding rather than as something scary.
