Poodles tails had to be docked after trip to Groomer

June_Oates

Just needed some help about something that has recently happened to two of my daughter’s small poodles.

My daughter took 4 of her doggies to have them groomed recently, one standard poodle puppy, one Bichon Frise and two toy poodles. On arrival home she noticed that the Groomer had, unknown to my daughter, put bows on all of the dog’s tails. The standard poodle puppy and the Bichon managed to pull these off themselves but my daughter had to remove the 2 bows from the tails of the two toy poodles which was about 7pm that night.

The following day after the groom my daughter contacted me to say there was something wrong with the 2 toy poodles tails and that as the day went on the fur was falling out – as I was away at the time I told her to keep an eye on them in case they had had an allergic reaction to something. By the following morning she sent me photos showing the 2 tails were nearly hairless and had turned red and she got an appointment at the vets for the 2 of them. The vet told her the tails had died and that they would part remove them on the following Monday.

I knew it had to be something which happened at the vets but she had not mentioned the bows but on mentioning them to me after the vets appointment I knew straight away that this must have been the cause of what had happened. We contacted the vets and they verbally came to the same conclusion.

Both doggies had full tail docking performed on the Monday and I asked them to type me a letter so that I could have something to give to the groomer which would be evidence of what had occurred. But after waiting for this letter for a good couple of weeks it duly arrived with no mention of what had caused this and after speaking to somebody at the vets they say they did not want to put anything in the letter because they did not see the bows on the dog’s tails.

I have had to use my credit card to pay the bill of £681.98 and all I was asking them to pay was this amount but they are refusing any liability for what has happened. Have we a leg to stand on in any way – can we complain as obviously this practice with putting elastic bands on dogs tails is cruel. I am attaching a photo of one of the dogs with shows how horrific this was.

ripplyuk

Those bands must have been extremely tight to cause such serious damage in that amount of time. I'm assuming your daughter removed them immediately. Has your daughter spoken to the groomer? I'd do that first. If they refuse to help then you ultimately could go to the small claims court.

Sorry this has happened OP. I agree that the groomer putting bands on dogs tails is a bad idea, especially on very small dogs. But I'm not surprised the vet wouldn't state that the bows caused the problem. If they didn't even see it, they wouldn't be certain who or what caused this.

Rachel83

What did the groomer say when your daughter talked to them straight after? Or did she not say a word between getting the dogs home, having their tails docked then waiting weeks for the letter? Might not have much to go on other than a warning? Were photos taken of the dogs on discovery of bows on tails or during the process. I'd be thinking of evidence of youre to take it to court.

June_Oates

Sorry for the delay in getting back, my computer was broken. My daughter didn't even realise the bows were on the tails until she got home - they had been on the tails for at least 4 hours at the groomers. Yes photos were taken of the hair loss and what happened to the tails before they were docked and afterwards. If this had happened to just one dog I can understand that people may think it was something else but it had to be the bands - we have photos of the bands too. The groomer was contracted by a local dog play center to go in and groom dogs and at no point would the play center let us have any details or phone number of the groomer.