My dog traumatised after shave
Champion Pekingese Taro was traumatised after his coat was accidentally shaved off at a posh doggy hotel
HE USED to win prizes left, right and centre thanks to his bushy tail and beautiful coat. But these days Taro is looking decidedly hangdog. “He’s been scarred for life,” his heartbroken owner, Ronel Vorster, tells us. “Just look at his bare body. Shame!”
But the worst part is the emotional pain. Ronel says her champion Pekingese has been left traumatised after a nightmare stay at a posh dog hotel in Cape Town where almost all his fur was shaved off without her permission.
“Taro was a show dog and regularly won competitions. Now he just doesn’t strut the way he used to,” she says.
When we arrive at her home in Melkbosstrand near Cape Town we instantly know we’re at the right house. Over the intercom we can hear frenzied barking. As Ronel opens the door, Taro comes to sniff at our feet while still yapping hysterically.
“His barking is a lot worse than it was before,” his owner explains. “Taro is an angry little dog now. He doesn’t want to see anything or anyone.”
She’s giving him a natural dog-calming medicine every day and, on the advice of an animal behaviourist, his interaction with outsiders is being kept to a minimum.
I try to break the ice by commiserating with him. “Poor boy, what happened to you?” I ask.
Taro barks and growls. “Don’t mess with me,” Ronel translates.
It’s clear she and her husband, Arno, treat Taro – which is Japanese for “firstborn” – and Tamara, another Pekingese, as if they were their children.
There are dog beds all over the house including in their bedroom, as well as three chests full of toys and clothes.
A black-and-white photo of Taro and Tamara has pride of place on the living room wall. The picture was taken in happier days, long before the painful events of the past few weeks.
Ronel says Taro is a different dog since his close shave.
“Usually he’d wait at the door for my husband to come home. Now he rolls himself into a little ball and hides under the table or curls up in his bed. He also sometimes licks his feet until they bleed because the hair there has been shaven. He throws up all the time and doesn’t eat the way he used to.”
He’s also become possessive and aggressive, she adds. “Now he bites Tamara when she gets too close to him.”
Ronel shows us a mark on her left thumb where he took a nip at her too. But there are no hard feelings – the behaviourist told her the pooch is just acting out because of his trauma.
“He’s a very sensitive little dog,” Ronel says.
TARO has been a guest at the @Frits Dog Hotel and Daycare Centre in Cape Town’s city centre three times in two years. Ronel checked him in there whenever she and Arno had to travel and couldn’t take their dogs. Taro also once attended playschool at the daycare facility.
The couple put a lot of thought into choosing a hotel for the dogs as it was vital they found the right place. Years ago their Pekingese Benjiy had his left eye bitten out by a Maltese poodle at a dog
salon in Bothasig.
He eventually died of natural causes at the age of 16. Ronel was so shattered it took 10 years before she was ready to let a dog into her life again.
“I cried too much for Benjiy and needed to wait before we got more kids.”
Taro and Tamara are seasoned travellers, Ronel tells us proudly. “They’re so well-behaved that they’re welcome at guesthouses and hotels.”
Two-year-old Taro took his first flight at only eight weeks old when the couple went to pick him up from a breeder in Pretoria. “He’s now a frequent flyer on British Airways,” she says.
Return tickets for the dogs cost about R800 each.
Ronel regrets not taking them along when she accompanied her husband on a business trip to Gauteng recently. It would’ve been cheaper than the R2 188 she spent on their accommodation at the dog hotel.
“I’ll never leave them anywhere ever again,” she declares.
They booked them in at the hotel on 14 September. The dogs were in the Pupeye the Sailor room which, like all other suites at the hotel, is equipped with cameras. Ronel liked this because she could use an app on her phone to keep an eye on them.
She and Arno were due to return from Johannesburg one Sunday morning but when their flight was delayed Ronel called the hotel to say they were going to be a bit late. It was then she heard there’d been “a lot of drama with Taro”.
“The owner told me he’d been accidentally shaved.” Ronel says she became so hysterical people at the airport must have thought she’d “escaped from a mental facility”.
At this point the dog was already half-shaven and she instructed staff to put him back in his room so she could see him on the camera.
Ronel is afraid the black upper hair on his beautiful coat will never grow back.
“Now he’s just one colour. His tail was his asset. Now look at how it’s thinned out . . . It was plain negligence and ignorance. It’s going to take between one and two years for him to look the way he did.”
THE sound of barking dogs can be heard from far off when you make your way to @Frits. Since the hotel opened in December 2015 more than 32 000 dogs have trotted through its doors.
“What happened with Taro was human error,” says Yanic Klue, owner of the dog hotel and daycare centre. She has seven dogs of her own, including Frits Smit – after whom the centre is named.
The establishment boasts luxury suites with names such as The Hollywoof, which is fitted with small hotel beds and TVs, as well as standard rooms with names such as K9 Nkandla and Jurassic Bark.
“Transparency is very important to me,” Yanic adds. “Dogs can’t talk. That’s why there are cameras everywhere in the rooms and play area so owners can check in to make sure everything is okay.”
She shows us the forms that owners fill in to indicate what their dogs should eat and also whether they have conditions such as asthma or cancer or need to be bathed or shaven. Owners can also alert staff to things that could traumatise their dogs.
Yanic acknowledges this isn’t the first time a dog has accidentally been shaven.
“The woman who shaved Taro comes in every Saturday. She didn’t listen. That’s why she made that mistake. We gave her an official warning.”
In the wake of the latest incident the hotel has changed its procedure to ensure the dog’s name and breed is clearly marked on the form by agreement.
“We learn from our mistakes,” Yanic says.
‘He throws up all the time and doesn’t eat the way he used to’