#930 Control and Service

So the other day I drove by a truck that does mobile pet grooming. Their business mission is to drive to your house, take your pet, lead it into their truck/van thing and groom it there. Apparently keeping hair, soiled suds, and nasty nail clippings out of your house and saving you the trouble of corralling your own animal and taking it to a site-based grooming establishment.
Hey, they can deliver milk and pizza, why not a dog haircut?
Not long after seeing the mobile pet grooming van, I passed another large enclosed van. Painted on its side was “Animal Services.”
Huh, I thought, could be taken just about the same way. What animal services do you provide? Grooming, check, washing, check, testicle removal, check, euthanasia...
It’s this whole branding thing again. Used to be we called it “the pound.” If your dog isn’t licensed they’re going to take him to the pound. I was never sure where they got that name. I suppose the word is a contraction of impoundment, but who knows? As a kid, I always thought they were going to pound on the poor dog. Not unlike the way my older brother would say he was going to pound on me.
Pound and punishment were inexorably interwoven in my intellect.
From “pound” they began to call the place “Animal Control.” Or sometimes they would say “Animal Shelter.” The yin and yang of animal management. Control and shelter. We’ll gather up the strays and wild ones, we’ll hold on to the abandoned ones for a while and then we’ll control their population again with the ultimate solution.
At some point, it became obvious that it wasn’t all about control and it certainly wasn’t just about shelter. With computerized licensing, spaying and neutering, and micro-chipping there were numerous new avenues of animal affairs to administer.
So “Animal Services” was born.
Still, it’s hard to shake the notion that a roving van with a sign that says “Animal Services” might offer a mobile pet-i-cure.
Though with neutering as one of the possible services, you may want to be careful how you ask for certain types of grooming.
Specify you want to have a pet clipping, not have your pet clipped.
America, ya gotta love it.