Reporter's Notebook: Pawdicures and Neuticles -- Inside the World of Dog Plastic Surgery
It's usually medical, but sometimes for vanity (the owner's).
March 8, 2012— -- How far do you think a dog owner would go to primp their pooch?
Whatever you're thinking, the answer is: further.
At the Atlanta Dog Spa we met Anais Hayden, a canine creative stylist, who was busy giving a terrier called Frankie Beans a blueberry facial, before giving his friend Boomer Junior a "pawdicure." Yes, a pawdicure.
"Creative styling is where you add a little bit of color," explains Hayden. "Whether that's rhinestones, a little bit of glitter ..."
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Her psychedelic creations are astounding. She even paints dogs' nails. And the dog owners -- or "mommies and daddies," as Hayden calls them -- love the results, because their dogs turn heads in the park, and back home they are clean, fragrant and "kissable."
And do the dogs like it? "They love it," replies Hayden, as she brushes Boomer Junior's teeth.
Hayden goes only skin deep. But some dog owners go far deeper in pursuit of canine beauty, tattooing their dogs' flesh (which requires a full anesthetic) and even piercing their ears.
And then there's surgery: plastic surgery. We've heard tell of a Chihuahua in Florida that had liposuction, although only a pound of fat was removed. There's a mutt in South Africa who has been fitted with a titanium nose. An Australian dog called Roland had a brow lift. A Saint Bernard in England had a full face lift. Dogs are injected with Botox, have braces fitted to their teeth, and canine nose jobs are pretty commonplace.
But surely dogs don't care what they look like.
"There's no bikini season for dogs," explains Dr. Marty Becker, a renowned small-animal veterinarian with a clinic in Idaho. "There's no ultra-thin dog models on Animal Planet."
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