Do-It-Yourselfers Get a Taste of the Hair of the Dog

It probably started with those do-it-yourself carwash places, where you drop about a dozen quarters into a slot and blast your car with a high-powered water nozzle like some carwash Rambo. Then came restaurants where you cook your own steak.

So what’s next? A concert where you write your own symphony? A psychiatrist’s office where you lie on a couch and tell yourself about your terrible childhood?

These were the questions that bubbled up when I drove past U-Wash Doggie, a do-it-yourself dog- and cat-grooming shop in my Studio City neighborhood. Had society come to the point where we need a special location to shampoo our Shih Tzus? Unless your pet is a Clydesdale or a boa constrictor the size of a telephone pole, put the smelly little bugger in the bathtub and scrub. What’s the big deal?

I decided to suspend further judgment until I had investigated. To be fair, my pet experience had been limited to a cat that does not require my assistance in its personal hygiene.

I found myself at the doggie wash, being introduced to a friend’s 85-pound border collie mix named Pikku. The name supposedly comes from the Finnish word for “small,” but this animal was the size of a Shetland pony with hair like Don King.

I knew immediately there would be trouble. Pikku yelped and struggled as her owner wrestled her through the shop’s door, grunting, “She hates baths.”

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Francisco Gamero, who launched the U-Wash Doggie business three years ago, explained the deal: For $10 to $14, depending on poochie’s size, you get the use of an apron, shampoo, a bathtub, brushes and an industrial-strength hair dryer. Or for $20 to $40, you can drop off your putrid pooch and the shop does the dirty work.

Gamero got the idea when he was having troubles washing his golden retriever in his bathtub years ago, deciding that “if I’m having problems with my dog myself, other people are too.”

Gamero opened his first shop in Santa Clarita. The messy-mutt biz grew so rapidly that he sold partnerships for shops in Studio City and Burbank, and he plans to open several more, including one in Woodland Hills. He is not alone in this business. Shops with names such as E-Z Pet Wash and My Beautiful Dog-O-Mat have sprouted all over town.

My first problem was getting Pikku into the tub, which was about three feet off the ground so I wouldn’t need to bend over to scrub her. Gamero offered a stepladder specially made to get mutts into the tub. Pikku would have nothing to do with it. She just sat on the floor, staring at the tub, eyes rolling in terror.

Finally, Pikku’s owner lifted the dog into the tub. I chained her to the side to keep her from squirming around.

I was ready to fire a burst from the hose when Janet Benedict, one of the shop’s owners, suggested that I first comb off excess hair with a soft wire brush.

By the time my arm grew tired of brushing, I had about 10 pounds of hair in the tub, on the brush, on my hands and in the tub’s drain. Once I got Pikku soaped down, she did what comes natural to wet dogs: She shook, hurling gobs of suds and long, coarse hairs in all directions. My white sweat shirt looked like a sort of odd, gray wool sweater.

Benedict had taught me a trick to keep dogs from shaking--just lift one of the dog’s front legs so she would be too unbalanced to shake. This had no affect on Pikku, an incredibly well-balanced animal who could have gone on shaking if I had hung her upside down from the ceiling. And indeed, she howled as if I had. Long, loud, eardrum-piercing howls, lowered only when Benedict began tossing Pikku dog treats.

Several shakes and howls later, I was ready to use the industrial-strength hair dryer that was supposed to dry off the average head (human, not canine) in five minutes.

Pikku’s bulk soaked up about 20 minutes, more time than I need to wash and dry a pickup truck.

The final touch: cologne. Gamero sprayed Pikku with a delicate aroma sure to drive the male dogs in the neighborhood mad.

So there’s Pikku, fluffy and shiny and smelling like the perfume counter at Saks.

And here’s me, looking like I had been dipped in tar and dragged through a toupee shop.

That’s when it struck me.

The tub.

The tub was lined on all sides with long black hairs that formed groovy little tie-dye designs.

“A disaster,” Pikku’s owner agreed.

Yet it was the tub that made me realize why do-it-yourself pet grooming shops are the boom biz of the ‘90s.

I may have been a mess, but at least when I got home I could clean up in a tub that does not look like it is lined with gray shag carpet.