Dog grooming service has fun while serving families, their four-legged friends
May 23—"Is that a goat?"
"Is someone walking a dragon?"
...and other similar questions can often be overheard at events in Hunt County when the colorfully dyed and costumed canine representatives of Quinlan-based pet grooming service Dawg Gone Dirty make an appearance.
"It's something we started doing when we started using dyes made by OPAWZ, which are vegetable based and safe to use," said Tricia Ricketts, owner of Dawg Gone Dirty. "We started simple with things like dying one of our clients' dogs (a poodle named Prince) to look like he was wearing a Santa suit for a Christmas party.
"While we don't do it too often for our clients, it's fun to play dress up and the dogs like the extra attention they get," Ricketts added.
At events over the last few years, such as Bras for the Cause and the Hunt County Comic Expo, one of Ricketts' associates, Beth Thomison, has been something of an ambassador for the grooming service and has often been seen walking one of her dogs, elaborately costumed as fantasy creatures.
For Halloween in 2019, she trimmed and dyed the fur of her wolfhound mix, Jack, and decked him out with horns as a Kirin, which she described as a "unicorn in Japanese mythology." The design, which she based off of a Japanese beer mascot, was developed over the course of two years.
"It's a good feeling when you plan something out for so long and it comes out like you want it, and when you show it to people, pretty much all you hear is 'wow,'" Thomison said.
Another one of Thomison's creations that turned a lot of heads at public events was her project for Halloween 2021, when which her Russian wolfhound, Melody, was made to look like the Pokémon, Houndoom. To complete the effect, Thomison dressed as main Pokémon protagonist Ash Ketchum.
While Thomison's elaborate designs have attracted their share of attention, she also started relatively simply when she began working at Dawg Gone Dirty after retiring from the U.S. Air Force. It was then, that she became interested in entering dog grooming competitions, and she dyed a Celtic knotwork design into her dog, Jargon's, fur and ended up getting second place in an international competition.
When Thomison decided to try her hand at competitive dog grooming, she also encouraged her boss, Ricketts, to enter. At that same international competition, Ricketts received an honorable mention for her design of a flaming phoenix on the back of her dog.
This year, both Thomison's kirin design and Ricketts' phoenix design are featured in OPAWZ's annual publication, titled iFashion.pet
While the grooming service takes pride in the recognition they've received for "extreme" dog grooming, they are humbled and appreciative of the relationships they've developed in their regular day-to-day work with people and their dogs.
"We have a lot of regular customers," Ricketts said. "We first opened in 2007, and we have taken care of some dogs for their entire lives, from the time they were puppies to when they passed, and now we take care of their owners' new dogs."
One of the things that helps to create this bond between the staff at Dawg Gone Dirty and their clients is the laid back, family atmosphere of their business.
"When people come here, they can see all these dogs from different households getting along and playing, and a lot of them can't believe it," Ricketts said. "The thing is, here, the dogs get a little break from guarding their homes and families and they can just relax, have fun and 'be dogs.'"
