A LOVE STORY
DeKalb pet groomer’s affection is returned by her furry friends
For dog lovers, there’s no better job than to be a groomer.
A groomer gets to love on our dogs, pet them, massage them, receive doggie kisses and make them pretty and attractive.
“I just enjoy it,” Bonnie Yates, DeKalb’s homegrown dog groomer, said. “You gotta enjoy what you do. It doesn’t matter what it is. I’ve been lucky. I’ve liked everything I’ve done my whole life in the way of jobs.”
Yates said her experience as a beautician has come in handy as she already knew some of the techniques needed to be good at her job.
“I went to college to become a beauticians,” she said. “And that helps if you’re going to groom because you learn how to hold the clippers and scissors. I took a crash course on grooming at Texarkana College in 1988 to get my certificate. And I’ve since been to all kinds of trade shows and seminars. It’s very interesting.”
Not only does she love having dogs visit her, but the dogs and their human companions love her as well.
Carrie Ritchie drives two hours and 45 minutes one way from Oklahoma to bring her dogs to see Yates.
The canine brother and sister are two of her best clients. The male is a white miniature schnauzer named Nietzsche, whom Yates calls Neetchee. The female is a black miniature schnauzer named Chelsea. Yates has been grooming the pair since 2013.
“Her (Ritchie’s) mom lives down the road, so she goes to see her for the day while I take care of the babies,” Yates said.
Ritchie says that Nietzsche adores Yates. He bounces all over the car all the way; he can’t wait to get there.
“He won’t let anyone else groom him,” Yates said. “When they arrive, he jumps across that gate to me and he won’t let her even talk to me anymore.”
Not only can she walk the walk, Yates certainly has the talk down pat too, as evidenced by her conversation with Nietzsche.
“He’s my little lover boy. Yes, he is. Give me kisses. You going to hug my neck? You just hugs so hard. Yes, he does. Come here. Give me a hug. There ya go. He’s so sweet. He’s a sweet boy, yes he is. He’s mama’s baby. He’s a rotten little baby boy. You is such a good baby.”
Dog lovers everywhere will automatically understand this language.
Also visiting Yates this particular morning was a little Shih Tzu named Bailey.
Yates has been grooming Bailey since June 2015. His “mom” is Susan Livingston, who lives nearby. While he waits for his turn to be pampered, he sits ever-so-patiently in his little crate that is positioned just right so he can see when Mom drives in to pick him up. That’s when the tail starts a-waggin’. You can almost hear him saying, “Mom’s here! Mom’s here!”
Not all of Yates’ clients are lap dogs. Sometimes, she will see big dogs come to get their day full of attention.
“I did a big ol’ German shepherd yesterday,” she said. “She weighed a good 150 pounds.”
Yates has an electric table that lowers down to ground-level to help her get the larger dogs onto it. Then it raises to allow her to trim them comfortably.
“I got her on the table no problem, got her hair cut,” she said. “But then I couldn’t get her in the (raised bath) tub. Usually if I get them waist high, I can pick them up and carry them. But I couldn’t lift her.
“So, I got the rolling (office) chair and got her in it. But then I couldn’t get her up into the tub. The chair sits too low. I tried to help her but she wouldn’t go. I had to call my husband and ask him and his friend to come over and get her in the tub.
“I’ve had them so big I had to sit on the floor to groom them. They looked like cows. … (The owners) would park their cattle trailer out there on the road and lead them in here. They were so big. Great Pyrenees big.”
Yates has been grooming for several years. She and her husband, Kenny, used to live in New Boston, where they had a kennel. It was a natural progression to add a grooming business as she was doing it anyway for the dogs they raised and dog sat.
Bonnie and Kenny raised several types of dogs at their kennel, where they once had 135 dogs, including chihuahuas, poodles, Shih Tzus, Yorkies, Pomeranians, English bulldogs and her favorite, Dalmatians.
Between beautician and
groomer, Yates has been in the beauty business all her adult life.
Born in California, she lived in DeKalb as a young girl with her grandparents. She still sleeps on the same bed she slept on with her grandmother until she got married.
“I lived in the same house until I got married. Went to school in DeKalb for 12 years,” she said.
She graduated in May 1968 and married Kenny in June of the same year.
She has gained a lot of experience with dogs throughout the years.
“Their temperature is a lot warmer than ours, so they don’t like real hot water. And I put baby shampoo on their faces so it won’t get in their eyes and burn. I like to do their beards with regular pet shampoo because that’s where the food and everything goes.”
One big surprise is that she uses Dawn dishwashing liquid.
“I do that first and it gets all the nasty off them better,” she said. “And it will get fleas too. I have a flea shampoo too, or I use that oatmeal shampoo because it soothes their skin. I’ve used the same Tropiclean (Oxymed Anti-itch Oatmeal Shampoo) since the ‘80s. I use both the Tropicleans—one’s for fleas and the other is soothing anti-itch.”
When she had the kennel in New Boston, she and Kenny’s sister opened their grooming shop.
“She came out to the house and we opened a grooming shop out in front of the kennel on a dirt road in New Boston,” Yates said. “Didn’t think we’d do nothing. But we did. We did all the dogs both of us could do. So I went to that grooming course so I could get my license. It’s not required, but to me I think anybody ought to.
“Later, the pet shop at the mall in Texarkana went out of business and we bought them out. So we had a complete big pet shop in New Boston by the old jailhouse. We had fish, snakes, mice, guinea pigs, alligators and of course we had the puppies we were raising.”
In addition, Yates has worked at Lone Star Ammunition building hand grenades and at the Lone Star Steel mill building pipe. She also spent several years managing a loan company.
Kenny is an electrician who worked building the nuclear power plant in Glen Rose, Texas. He now works for a house rental business doing upkeep and electrical jobs.
Plus, every Thursday, he drives about 400 miles delivering the Thrifty Nickel to several towns in Arkansas, getting up at 3 a.m. just to make the trip. It generally takes him about 12 hours to complete the route, making 115 stops and delivering 4,000 copies of the paper. He’s been doing that for more than 20 years.
In the Yates’ den, one wall is used exclusively for dog crates. Bonnie takes in overnighters and has set up the den to house them all. They have access to the chain-link fenced backyard and Kenny even buried the wire so the dogs can’t dig out of it. Bonnie and Kenny have had as many as 10 extra dogs in their home at one time.
“I do a lot of boarding and I love that because I get to see the different dogs,” she said.
After Yates retired from the loan company, she was sitting in her chair one afternoon and soon found herself taking a short nap. When she awoke, she was amazed that she had slept in the middle of the day. She has never napped in her life and was bound and determined not to do it again.
“I said to Kenny, ‘Come on, we gotta find me something to do. I can’t live like this,’” she said. “I was too bored. We have worked our tails off all our life and I won’t take any kind of handout. So, we went to Ashdown and bought one of those out-buildings. Loaded it up, brought it home and finished it out ourselves. We opened the grooming hut in March 2013.”
The Yateses have four pets— three dogs and one cat. Sage is a 3-year-old female mini-Australian shepherd with the prettiest face. Crazy Mazie Yates is their 7-year-old female chihuahua who has been taught to say her prayers. Both are house dogs.
They also have an outside dog named Wrangler, who is a Jackrat, which is a Jack Russellrat terrier mix. He is 12 years old now and still loves it when mom or dad spin him around on his back on the floor.
Lili-Lili is their beautiful peach-and-white rescue cat they saved from their pasture when she was about 4 weeks old. She and Wrangler are best buds.
The Yateses have raised six children: Dusti, 46; Kristi, 43; (Little) Kenny, 24; Savannah, 26; Michael, 22; and Belle, 12. They also have two great-grandchildren: Savannah’s son, J.C., is 2 years old and Michael’s son, Lane, is also 2 years old. The boys were born about a month apart.
(Little) Kenny is married to Ashlyn, who works at the DeKalb Animal Hospital, and Michael is married to Jaislee, who works at Brookshires in New Boston.
While speaking about boarding the dogs, Yates said, “I try to just keep my customer’s dogs. They love me to death. People have told me, ‘If something was to happen to me, will you take my dog?’ So I guess, if something happens to all my customers, I’ll have a houseful of dogs. But they all love it here, so why not?”