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Bean was a miniature wiener dog, weighing about eight pounds, nine pounds if he was holding onto a poop, overall a very small dog. When standing on his legs next to Tommy, Bean’s shoulders came to just above Tommy’s ankles.
People would think that would make it easy to manage him. Those people were wrong.
Due to his small size, Bean was very adept at sneaking in and out of things. Hands, boxes, a four inch holes in his dog carrier, Bean had escaped it all.
Despite Tommy blocking off the bottom of the stairs to keep Bean from running all around the upper floors, Bean thwarted Tommy’s efforts when he was able to squeeze between the wooden shafts holding up the railing.
Whenever Tommy attempted to give him a bath in the big bathtub in the bathroom, Bean kept squeezing out of his arms, and running from one side of the bath to the other. After a couple attempts of trial and error, including once just using the hose out in the yard, Tommy found it easiest to just put Bean in the kitchen sink and give him a bath there (the sinks in the bathrooms were just a bit too small for that).
But the biggest thing this presented a problem in was when Tommy needed to clip Bean’s nails. Bean always escaped Tommy’s arms when he saw the nail clippers come out. Tommy had bought one of the dremel drills thinking that might work better, but even on the ‘quiet’ setting the noise sent Bean running. And Tommy had to figure out a way to do this fast, because taking the dog to the pet store every other week and having them charge him $20 each time was becoming annoying and expensive.
He tried to get Buck to help him when it came to clipping Bean’s nails. At first they tried having Buck hold Bean in the air as Tommy clipped the dogs nails, but Bean always tried to wiggle out of Buck’s arms on a good day, and that was not a good day.
Then they tried having Tommy hold Bean and Buck clipped the dog’s nails, but Buck was too afraid he would end up hurting Bean for it to actually be useful.
So now Tommy had no idea what to do. Because he was not spending a full $20 on clipping Bean’s nails again.
That was highway robbery, in Tommy’s opinion.
It was a couple days after their latest (and failed) attempt to clip Bean’s nails that someone at Harbor came up to show Tommy something.
“What is that?” Tommy asked as he looked at Max’s phone.
“It’s a video my sister shared with me yesterday,” Max explained. “This woman’s got a wiener dog like you got. Look what she needs to do to clip their nails.” As Max showed Tommy the video, he was laughing, but Tommy couldn’t help but think that the idea was genius.
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“Do you really think this is going to work?” Buck asked as he looked at the piece of fabric that arrived at Tommy’s door that morning.
“It’s our last resort,” Tommy said. “And it's what the groomers use anyway. So if it works for them…” Tommy shrugged his shoulders.
The idea in question was a grooming sling. A piece of fabric a little longer than the length of Bean’s body, with four leg holes. Tommy would use it to pick Bean up, then attach two hooks to the top of it to hang Bean from the shower rod in the bathroom. Once hanging, Bean wouldn’t be able to wiggle out of his arms and run away from him. Tommy would finally be able to clip his nails.
With the sling in his hands, Tommy looked across the house to where Bean was in the living room, chewing on a new dog toy Buck had bought last week. Now to see how hard it would be to get Bean into this…
It was surprisingly easy, really.
And by that, about as easy (or hard) as it usually was to catch him to put him in the harness they used for walks. Now Tommy was holding Bean from the two hooks on top of the sling. “To the bathroom,” he told himself.
Buck followed only a couple steps behind Tommy as they went to the bathroom attached to the guest bedroom. Tommy hung Bean from the shower rod, and took a step back.
“This looks kind of silly,” Buck said as he looked at Bean.
“You don’t have to say kind of,” Tommy said. “It looks completely silly.”
“I need to take a picture of this,” Buck said as he took his phone out of his pocket, opening up the camera. “Maddie and Jee will love this.”
“Chimney will report us for animal abuse,” Tommy said.
“Well, look at his face,” Buck said. Bean was looking at the two humans, absolutely miserable and definitely wanting to be put down. “If he could talk, I’m sure he’d be saying we’re abusing him.”
Tommy looked into Bean’s eyes, gave the dog a smile and scratch on the top of the head. “You’re a good boy,” Tommy told Bean. He then held up the nail clippers. “And you’re going to continue to be a good boy and let me get this done quickly.”
It turned out that while the grooming sling most certainly did help Tommy, it didn’t solve everything. Tommy still needed to get a good grip on Bean’s legs, but the dog was still able to slip whatever leg Tommy was holding out of his grip.
“Buck, come over here,” Tommy directed at one point.
“What do you need me to do?” Buck asked as he stepped up to stand next to Bean’s head.
“Just, scratch his head,” Tommy said. “Try and distract him from,” he held up the nail clippers. “This.”
With Buck scratching Bean’s head, things began going marginally well with clipping the rest of Bean’s nails. Bean was still trying to move his legs out of Tommy’s grip though. And then-
Bean yelped. Loud.
And Tommy cursed.
“What was that?” Buck asked.
“I cut one too short,” Tommy said. Buck tried to comfort the dog, rubbing his fingers over Bean’s head and down his neck. Tommy looked closer at the nail in question. “I don’t see any blood at least,” he said. “I think I just scared him a little.”
“Yeah?” Buck asked.
“Yeah,” Tommy said as he moved to Bean’s other rear leg. “One more leg to go.”
Tommy was slightly slower with the last paw, not wanting to make the same mistake again. Once finished, he took a step back.
“Did I miss any toes?” Tommy asked.
“I think you got all of them,” Buck said as he continued to rub circles behind Bean’s ears. “Did we miss any, Bean?” Bean only continued to swing his legs. “I think he wants to get down.”
“He’s been wanting to be put down since I picked him up in this,” Tommy said.
Tommy walked back up to Bean and picked the two hooks up from the shower rod. He gently set the dog’s feet on the floor of the bathroom, and then dropped the sling from under the dog. “Go free,” Tommy said as Bean ran off.
“So, would you say that was successful?” Buck asked.
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Maybe after a couple more times I’ll be able to do it faster without hurting him.”
“You didn’t hurt him,” Buck said, wrapping his arms around Tommy. “You just… scared him a little.”