The Day After: Groomer Has It Recap Episode #3!!

 

 

Oh  boy……Groomer Has It is getting  really good! 

 The air was so thick you could cut it when Krista walked back into the Dog House after she and Chicken Joe were deemed “Back of the Pack” last week, meaning that Chicken Joe was the groomer who was cut! Ohhhh…….all the other groomers did NOT look happy and most of them looked slightly shocked.  Krista told the group that she thought that Chicken Joe felt he was “ready to go home” which a few of the other groomers had a hard time swallowing.  After yet more tears from Krista, the girl who professed in the second episode not be the type to get all ” sappy”,immediately dissolving into a puddle of tears, the other groomers decided she was feeling insecure and backed off.

Enter NEMO, the wonder messenger dog! This time, Nemo was dressed in a spa robe (complete with a little yellow ducky on the back!), hinting at what the groomers next challenge would be.

 The 10 remaining groomers were instructed to pair up as a team and meet Jai when they were done.  Jai told them that it’s a “dog eat dog world out there” and that everyone needed to learn how to relax as much as possible, including dogs!  The Quick Sniff Challenge was to perform dog massage and aromatherapy, and doing whatever it took to keep the chosen pooches calm by the end of the 15 minute session.  Cue the JRT’s, LOL…Jack Russell Terriers, not exactly the most mellow breed in the canine coterie! 

 Massage expert Anne Fisher was on hand to briefly discuss how to soothe a dog using massage and aromatherapy techniques prior to the teams getting started.  The groomers all seemed a little nonplussed at the outset by this challenge, but all of them seemed to do actually quite well, massaging, talking or humming to their dogs.  In the end, Ms. Fisher felt that she would have liked to have seen some of the groomers interact more with the dog than with each other, which she felt confused the dog, but overall, most of them got very good reviews. However…..the winners of the QS challenge this week were the team of Hubert and Marco, whose dog was practically comatose  he was so relaxed by the time they were done! As their reward for winning this challenge, both were treated to a spa experience at DTox Day Spa in Los Feliz.

After such a relaxing experience, it was back to the judging room where Jai presented the groomers with their Grooming Challenge, which was to work with VERY high-maintenance owners to produce EXACTLY the grooming result that they verbalized; “nothing more, nothing less, just perfection” as Jai so succinctly put it!

I have to say, that every groomer really tried to do exactly whatever the owners demanded; making sure there were no tear stains on Savage the Maltese and to keep his owner’s picture in view at all times (Bill was hysterical in this; after hanging the photo near the bathing tubs and it falling down because of the humidity, he held the picture in his teeth so it was in the dog’s view constantly), singing to the dog continuously (Krista almost drove everyone insane after singing her high-pitched interpretation of opera for the entire two hours ( she and Vanessa’s dog’s owner is an opera singer), giving the dog bottled water to drink every 10 minutes for fear of dehydration (Hubert and Marco) or telling the dog that they loved him, he was a good boy, etc continuously (Cassandra and Danielle). Bill’s complete adherence to his client’s wishes put them ahead of the pack, resulting in Bill and Lisa getting the Best in Show award this week.

And unknown factor in this challenge was that the owners were escorted into a special room while the groomers worked their magic and this special room was equipped with “Salon Vision”…a two way mirror where they could not only SEE everything that was going on, but hear what the groomer’s were talking about too! AWKWARD!!!!

As the winners in the Quick Sniff challenge, Hubert and Marco had the advantage of a 3 minute long “half-time” discussion with their charge’s owner to see how she thought they were doing and to ask if she had any grooming needs that she felt would be better met.  They were a little flummoxed by her reply that she just wanted Rufus to look “groomed”.

In the meantime, Jessica and Sherri as a team, had a dog belonging to a guy who’d just broken up with his girlfriend and wanted to use his dog as a chick magnet; he just wanted the dog to look attractive to females but also wanted him to look “macho”.  Sherri thought it would be a definite conversation starter to have a dog with a green-tipped tail, and proceeded to color the tip of Flippi’s tail!

Even though the judges thought Sherri’s decision was basically rational, and bold, they felt that coloring a dog’s fur without asking the owner first was a real faux-pas, and Sherri was the 3rd groomer eliminated from the competition.

The judges all felt that the groomers were all looking like real competitors now; that they’d really brought their “A” game this week. Things are just heating up!

Next week, the groomers are challenged to design an invention that would revolutionize the grooming profession; I can hardly wait to see what they come up with!