Licking and obsessive after Groomer
 

On Saturday, we brought 14-year old Tahoe and 1 year old Johnny Cash to the groomer. Their regular groomer wasn't working so two other female groomers groomed my dogs. They told me to come pick them up in 4 hours, as usual. After we picked them up 4 hours later and got them home, little Johnny Cash's behavior was odd. He was obsessively shadowing Tahoe, licking him and humping him! When we picked him up, Cash would not look us in the eye and would turn from left to right to find Tahoe over our shoulder. This went on all night. I thought maybe he was just anxious about the grooming and would be fine once we had a good night rest. He slept away from me, which is odd as he usually has to be right by my leg. The next morning he seemed better but not cured. It's been 5 days and he still obsessively licks Tahoe, constantly tries licking Tahoe's penis and follows Tahoe into the yard and waits while Tahoe pees so he can drink Tahoe's pee. It's very disturbing.

I have managed to out-train his dominance of humping and he's not doing that anymore, but I can't figure out how to keep him from licking Tahoe. He whines and cries if I separate him and Tahoe.

I'm also concerned about this behavior because Tahoe is starting to show signs of aging (arthritis, blinding, loss of hearing) and I fear how Tahoe's eventual death will affect Cash since he's so obsessed with Tahoe.

Does anyone here have any ideas how to resolve this problem and what could have caused it? I do know that when we picked up the dogs from the groomer, Cash was in a plexiglass case in the front room (he's never been enclosed in a closed case like that...a open cage, yes, but not an enclosed case like that) and Tahoe was in the back room. I also discovered later that Tahoe was nicked during his grooming session.

~ Kelly

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sorry about your experience and i hope that you find what you are looking for, sending prayers your way for things to go back to normal...

I really don't know anything about this sort of thing, just wanted to say to say Hi, I'm from Chandler too. I think you may be onto something with the fact that Taho was nicked; maybe Cash could smell the blood. Also the fact that they separated them and kept him in the Plexiglas gage, sounds rather traumatic for him. Hope you find some good answers.

Give them both a bath at home and use the same shampoo on them. That will get the smell of the groomer's products off them. Also launder their bedding in case any of the old scent lingers. I wish I had something more to offer. Who knows what happened at the groomers? We are lucky that there are some good mobile groomers here, and I am there the entire time and see everything that goes on. If they won't let me in the van, I don't hire them. I even did that for an elderly neighbor yesterday just to make sure the groomer did not mistread her Yorkie. It's something you might want to consider.

Its very weird to hear these type of stories of dogs after they get groomed.. like i remember one post where someone said their potty trained dog started peeing everywhere in the house after she took her yorkie to the groomers.. :confused:

i have no idea as to why hes behaving like that... i agree with lilyofthevalley.. give them both a bath and see if that helps!!! good luck!

Update
 

I have since been advised that Johnny Cash's behavior is not uncommon when buddies are groomed together. It results from the fact that since Tahoe now smells different (clean!), Johnny Cash thinks something has changed in Tahoe and it's making him anxious. We have since rewashed both of them (together) and Cash is no longer humping Tahoe (or anyone else) and only licks him occassionally, so things are much improved!

I'm also told that the groomers did house the two dogs together in the saem kennel until after their bath, which is when Johnny Cash started humping Tahoe and they separated them at that time because they didn't want JOhnny Cash to "finish" (if you know what I mean) on Tahoe and mess up his wash.


~ Kelly

Thanks for the update, I was wondering how the little guys were doing.