Downtown Dog

 

276

275

Suge K.

San Francisco, CA

I was just cleaning and found a magnet from this place and thinking about how my dog needs a bath and it was one of those rare "Damn, I miss Baltimore" moments.

I forget the owner's name - I'm thinking it was Laurie or something - but she was the greatest dog groomer I've ever taken my dog to see! I was living in Baltimore, taking a semester of grad school, and had a sublet of this great row home in Butcher's Hill. The problem with the place, well, besides the 2 block rule in Baltimore, where you're never more than 2 blocks away from a really rough neighborhood - and I mean rough like  you walk out the door to get the paper in the morning and your neighbors tell you how many people in a 5 block radius were killed the night before and it was probably a double digit number , not rough like "Oh my gawd, look! There are people who look different than me or are in a different socioeconomic category!" Ok, so the problem with my place was that it didn't have a good tub to give the dog a bath. And he is a stinky motherfucker. But he isn't fitting in a shower stall. And the clawfoot tub wasn't going to work.

So I called Downtown Dog and I talked to Laurie (and that's what I'm going to call her until somebody corrects me). I told her I needed a groomer and she asked how big my dog was. "Um, big?" I said, hoping that was enough of an answer. It wasn't. She wanted to know the weight. "Oh, you know, somewhere around 150 pounds," I said, nonchalantly. No way, she said, she had a bad back. So I asked if I could at least rent a tub. Sure, she said.

I went in there and was bathing him and she came over and stood behind me and then started correcting me. "Oh, come on, you've got to get his face!" "Hey, you missed a spot over there!" and finally "Oh, just get out of the way!" and she finished the job. She was his groomer from that point on - bad back or no bad back!

Over the next several months, Laurie and I became very friendly. My dog was extremely popular everywhere he went because he looked and smelled so good from being there so often. It got to the point where I'd bring a bottle of wine with me when I picked him up and we'd have a glass and chat. And she is one fantastic woman - we had the best talks about life and love and dogs and kids and art and music and travel. The last time I took him there was a sad day for all of us, since I was leaving Baltimore. She knew how much both he and I hated groomers putting any sort of bandanna or the like around his neck. So when I arrived, champagne in hand, there he was with an American flag bandanna around his neck. I played it cool for about 45 seconds and then she looked at me and said, "Sorry, I just couldn't help myself! I know how much you both hate it!" And we laughed as poor Suge looked at us like, "Yeah, yuck it up bitches! Now get this fucking thing off of me before I bust a cap in yo' ass!"

Downtown Dog is the place I miss most in Baltimore and the next time we're passing through, I'm taking him in for a bath. And a bandanna.

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