Justin’s dog Desmond — pictured here –owed him $6 after he went a little wild during a Petsmart grooming session, spurring the staff to sic a difficult dog fee on him. To Justin, the charge gave him a shock collar-level jolt.

He barks:

My girlfriend and I just took our yorkshire terrier puppy to Petsmart in [redacted], NJ for his first grooming. We had tried to get him groomed at a local groomer one time before but he was too skittish around the hair clippers, and the groomer didn’t want to scare him away from grooming for the rest of his adorable life, so she didn’t groom him. When we brought him into Petsmart, my girlfriend gave a heads-up to the groomer folks that he may be difficult and is a little scared of hair clippers, and the groomer said that was fine and that they’d work with him. They mentioned that if he was too uncomfortable, they’d do some of the job today and finish the rest tomorrow.

The grooming went fine and he looks great, so no problems there. He was, as expected, creeped out by the hair clippers and was apparently difficult to groom. The Petsmart groomer finished the whole job today, though, and tacked on an extra fee of $6 for him being difficult to groom. Prior to the grooming, and even with a fair warning from my girlfriend, we were never informed that we could be charged an extra fee if he was difficult.

We still paid the fee and went on our way, but we have a bit of a bad taste in our mouth about the extra fee. Chances are we would have tipped somewhere around $6 anyway, knowing that he is uncomfortable around hair clippers, but the idea of being forced to pay the extra fee seems iffy. I don’t want to downplay the difficulty of grooming a scared dog at all, but I guess we feel that would have been covered by the $44 price tag.

If you ask me, it’s the owners whose dogs tinkle in the aisles who should be paying fees. Pet owners, have you encountered Petsmart’s difficult dog fee?

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