In Hungary, Every Dog Has Its Day--at the Grooming Parlor

Sammy needs a haircut.

The last time he needed a haircut--that was in January--he bit his hairdresser.

Sammy has an appointment here at Kosmetika, a downtown salon where most clients do not even bark under the blow-dryer, let alone bite. Naturally, not everyone is looking forward to Sammy’s arrival. Yet he is a longtime customer, and he does live with a Budapest actress. The schnauzer is due at 1 p.m.

“We try to make every dog feel that he or she is a part of what is happening here,” explains Marika Szucs, who has been trimming dogs in the Hungarian capital since 1961, and Sammy since 1985.

She has given a lot of thought to the unpleasantness that transpired back in January.

“Sammy was preparing to bite me for five years. It was the owner’s fault really. She took off the muzzle too soon. I was very fast, and he didn’t get a really good bite. And you know, after he bit me, he felt much better about himself. Now we are good friends,” says Szucs, puffing thoughtfully on an extra-long filter cigarette, awaiting her 1 o’clock. “Of course, you still have to steal the hair off that dog.”

European culture is, by American standards, notably indulgent when it comes to dogs. From Paris to Prague, Ljubljana to Leningrad, dogs accompany their owners--to dinner at the finest restaurants, to weekends at the finest hotels. They ride trains, trams, subways and buses, often sitting side by side with their masters. Dogs in Europe go shopping, attend conferences and frequent parties.

By and large, they do it with less whining, growling, leash-jerking, spitting up and biting than might be expected of American canines. It is not at all unusual to see a European dog behave better in a restaurant than its owner, particularly in a German beer hall.

In Eastern Europe, where communism kept consumerism under grim wraps for half a century, dog ownership flourished as a link to the dignity and manners of the prewar urban bourgeoisie. Not only does the average mutt one encounters in the cities of Eastern Europe behave him- or herself, such a dog is likely to be well-fed, well-exercised and well-groomed.

A handsome, disciplined, nattily coiffed dog on a leash once served as a civilized symbol of dissidence. While communists could ruin the economy, defile the environment and build hideous neighborhoods out of concrete, they could not come between a cultured European and his dog.

Budapest, which has endured as the most ostentatiously elegant of Eastern European capitals, has 14 downtown dog parlors. Pending privatization of the economy, which will come as part of the new democratic government, these parlors are state co-operatives.

The former Communist government here tried (and failed) to split the difference between a Soviet command-style economy and a socialist market economy.

In its failure, however, it mildly encouraged dog care. Besides co-op dog parlors catering to non-working-class canines such as Lhasa apsos and Shih Tzus, there were state-sponsored seminars to educate people in how to wash and trim dogs.

Szucs, a lifelong dog lover who owns five dogs and breeds Kerry blue terriers, lectured at these seminars for two decades. Her dog-care theories are built around a central axiom: A dog that looks good feels good.

“Dogs like coming here,” she says while waiting for Sammy to show up. “Some may act as if it is beneath their dignity. But when these dogs go back home, they are the ones who are most proud of the way they look. Oh, they absolutely know they look better. I know one dog, a white poodle, that will not go home after a cut until he shows off for all the neighbors.”

Kosmetika--a sign out front says “The Salon Awaits Its Favorites”--caters to the vanities of its clients. Like many beauty parlors where human beings are shampooed, scissored and blow-dried, the walls are hung with brilliantly colored photographs of impossibly handsome creatures fresh from a perfect cut. There are Pekingese with ribbons in their hair and close-ups of cocker spaniels, their heads tilted coyly.

After a few bracing minutes with the shampoo girl (who works in a rubber apron at a long, deep sink), Kosmetika clients are carried out to the trim tables, where they stand shivering, waiting to be toweled off.

The smaller and skinnier clients, such as miniature schnauzers, seem to shrink in the minutes they spend in the shampoo sink. They emerge looking like bony, long-legged rats.

All of which brings to mind Sammy, a black miniature schnauzer who has always hated and has always tried to bite the shampoo girl.

A brother of the Budapest actress who owns Sammy brings him in for his 1 o’clock. When the brother lifts him into a waiting-room cage, Sammy nips him on the hand. The brother, hardly wounded, not complaining, leaves.

The Encyclopedia of Dogs, which is available for light reading in Kosmetika, goes on at some length about the difficulties of being a schnauzer.

“Faults include a level bite, a soft slick coat, toyishness, light or prominent eyes, shyness and viciousness, sway or roached back, loose elbows, and bowed or cow-hocked hindquarters,” the encyclopedia says.

His elbows seem fine, but Sammy clearly is not in a good mood. When it is time for his cut, Szucs collects him from the cage and carries him, growling, to her trim table.

On the table next to Sammy is a giant Russian terrier, a cheerful, clumsy-footed pup roughly 10 times the size of Sammy. The Russian terrier pokes a playful nose in the schnauzer’s direction, an overture that Sammy haughtily ignores.

“I am sure this dog likes me,” says Szucs as she begins to trim Sammy’s straggly hair. “But I can see in his eyes what he thinks about haircuts. He thinks, ‘I can’t take much of this.’ ”