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I have advantage, and it doesn't work for long (2 weeks at most!). I use the advantage on the chihuahua and another product (can't remember the name) on the pom. The pom will be groomed once every two months and the chihuahua gets dipped & nails clipped every 6 months. The basic wash is done by me in the bathroom sink. She doesn't bite the groomer... she's not handled very much. Maybe I just don't want to see what?

I want to spray the house and yard for fleas, to try to get under control, but my baby's pediatrician advised against it and suggested treating the dogs.

I've never had a flea problem if even ONE of my pets was treated. My dogs would swim and play in water and wash off most topical treatments, but I found fleas disappeared if I even treated just the cat religiously, which I did because he was highly allergic.

Maybe I just don't want to see what?

The amount of patience groomers have for other people's uncooperative dogs when they just have a job to do.

I am a professional pet groomer who started out as a hourly-paid bather at a PETsMART, but who is now employed as a full groomer by a small, privately owned shop. Some comments relevant to this story:

1. The only hourly-paid folks you'll see in most pet grooming facilities are bathers. Full-fledged groomers work on commission, usually 50-60% per dog. This can translate to a very good income for a fast, efficient groomer in a busy shop, and those who operate mobile grooming businesses can earn six figures. Even bathers usually make well above minimum wage. Grooming is highly skilled work that generally doesn't attract stupid people. (However a lot of groomers are quite eccentric, but that's another story entirely.) So the comments made by a couple of people about grooming shops being manned by "minimum-wage" (and therefore, stupid) workers is really, um, uniformed. With the following exception, which is about corporate shops like PETsMART and Petco:

2. Having worked in a corporate shop and by comparing experiences with a lot of other groomers and customers, I will go out on a limb by saying that mistakes seem more likely to happen in the high-volume corporate environments. The corps, looking to maximize profit, will hire inexperienced people as bathers for lower wages. Their turnover is usually very high, as bathing is an arduous and thankless task. In any corporate shop bathers with more than a couple of months' experience are in the definite minority. The bad thing is that corporate shops also use bathers as receptionists and customer service reps, which frequently causes chaos as people who don't know what they are doing are thrown into positions of responsibility.

3. An incident very much like the news story occurred at the PETsMART where I was employed, some years before. I was checking in a lady with a golden retriever who told me she hadn't been to this shop in four or five years because she'd had a bad experience. I asked her what happened, and she told me her dog had been given to the wrong customer at pick-up. She said that when she arrived to pick up her own dog, she was brought another golden which she immediately realized was not hers. Forunately, this dog had a tag with its name and owner's phone number, so the other customer was located quickly. The scary thing is, the other customer hadn't noticed that she had taken home the wrong dog.

4. People get their chihuahuas bathed all the time. I don't know why either, but they are usually delightful little dogs and I enjoy doing them even though I don't make much money off 'em.

5. Pomeranians have a thick double coat, the undercoat which is tight and a longer outer coat. If they aren't given a thorough brushing on a regular basis, they can get very tangled and matted espcially if they play outside enough to get wet. And since most people don't brush on a regular basis, grooming shops see a lot of poms. I like poms myself, most of 'em are very sweet.