The Day After: Groomer Has It Episode #8 Recap!

 

 

Rescue Me!!

With only 5 groomers remaining, not only is the fur flying, but this week had the TEARS flowing!

What an emotional episode all the way around!  The Quick Sniff Challenge and the Grooming Challenge were three hanky events!

To start off, little Yorkie and man- of- the -house, Nemo; made his appearance in a yellow rescue worker’s outfit. He was super adorable, complete with a little red cross on his back!

The groomers pretty much figured out that they’d be doing something at an animal shelter and they were right! They wound up at the Los Angeles SPCA shelter to groom dogs that they each chose for themselves. All the groomers seemed very moved seeing such wonderful animals with no homes and people to love them of their own.  It has to be really tough living and working in a world of animals who are pampered and adored and then seeing such austere and basic surroundings and such lonelieness and sadness in contrast.

 Suffice it to say that all the groomers did a fabulous job, making the dogs look so much better and making them feel so much better; but the biggest transformation overall was Huber with his dog, Winkle;  who was virtually non-communicative when he first walked into the shelter!  The little dog was almost in a “locked in” state, and didn’t acknowledge sound or anything;  absolutely heartwrenching! But Huber  brought Winkle out of his shell with his compassion and guest judge, comedienne Margaret Cho who owns 3 rescue dogs herself, saw the change not only esthetically, but psychologically.  So, Huber won the Quick Sniff Challenge!  Kudos to ALL of the groomers though, who really did do a phenomenal job on each dog!

Next, the groomers were taken out into the hills and were met there by service dog, Roselle and her sightless owner Michael, who spoke about the heroic role Roselle played on 9/11 when he was at work at the World Trade Center. It was so touching and emotional; hitting a nerve that is still amazingly raw 8 years later. 

The Grooming Challenge was to go back to the salon and clean rescue dogs who were very dirty. Huber, having won the Quick Sniff challenge got a ride back on the Fourtrax to the salon and was able to get a head start on his grooming, which they only had 45 minutes to complete, while the other groomers had to walk down to the bottom of the hill with their rescue dogs to the salon.

The real challenge was that the groomers couldn’t use any water or soap or dryers to clean the dogs up!  Which left them with dry shampoo products, cornstarch and towelling and brushing.  As some of the dogs had either long hair and/or long ears, it proved to be one of the most difficult challenges to date! 

This was not the best result any of the groomers had had so far; the judges really felt that none of them had done a very good job, and Roselle’s owner Michael, a guest judge with the advantage of a more highly developed sense of touch and smell, agreed with them. The dog’s coats still had a lot of dirt left in them, or had the dry shampoo residue still remaining and some of the dogs SMELLED bad!

The best of them were sent back to the Dog House as safe, and the bottom two were Huber and Bill!!! My heart was in my mouth! I just couldn’t believe that either one of them would have to leave and when they told Bill that he was safe, I almost died~! HOW could Huber go this soon? But it was the “RESCUE” show, remember??? And Huber was rescued at the last second; the judges said that nobody would be eliminated this week after they’d all done such a wonderful job helping the homeless dogs become more adoptable!

WHEW! All’s well that ends well, right?

Wait a minute! Does this mean that they’ll eliminate TWO groomers next week? Yikes! Watch and find out!