Just about every night during the Paris shows this past March, I had the same routine: Go back to the hotel, work, eat a delicious (if kind of sad) dinner from Cojean, the French Pret, that I’d stashed in the minibar earlier, work a bit more—and then, as a reward for making it through yet another day at the coalface of fashion, go to YouTube to watch Girl With the Dogs.
It’s a channel of videos of a Canadian woman who, in all likelihood, wouldn’t tip the scales at 100 pounds wrestling with the likes of a 220-pound hirsute beast of a Caucasian Shepherd (or Ovcharka)—or an adorable Chow who defies every negative association with his breed—to groom them. (Much of Girl With the Dogs’s content is an odyssey into the foibles and idiosyncrasies of breeds you’ll know and those you don’t—to name just one example, it’s only through watching her video of Loki that I discovered the magnificent Leonberger.) There’s a Chihuahua called Pablo who has breathing difficulties, or Angel—an aging rescue who needed to have one eye removed, and yet here she is, looking wonderful, looking loved, looking cared for.
Girl With the Dogs is a real person, Vanessa De Prophetis, who’s based in Niagara Falls, Canada, and for several years has uploaded videos at a rapacious pace (to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram) of her working with dogs (and cats) who travel to her from across both Canada and the US to be groomed. Each video takes you through the process of transforming them—simultaneously instructional and hilarious and heart-warming (or -rending)—through brushing, clipping, bathing, blow-drying, and treat-dispensing.
Fans of her work know all the references—happy hoodie, murder mittens, Nasty Critter shampoo. The videos are such compulsive viewing for dog owners (or me, a wannabe dog owner) that at the Met Gala one year I ended up telling known canine lover Demi Moore all about them. De Prophetis doesn’t charge anyone for her time—the quid pro quo is that the dogs’ caretakers allow her to film, and then post, their beloved pet being transformed. It’s that simple—and, at the same time, not.
Over the course of the twenty or so minutes of every episode, what you see is someone who’s a miracle worker with the conversational skills of Dr. Dolittle: A soother of nerves, a reader of emotions, a person blessed with being able to bond with just about any canine or feline companion—even those who are, in GWTD vernacular, spicy. De Prophetis’s fun, entertaining, and informative videos should be required viewing for anyone thinking about getting a pet, because what they underscore time and time again is that the human-dog dynamic is a long-term relationship built on responsibility; that it’s one of care, commitment, and choosing just the right breed for you. Well, that’s obvious, you might say. Indeed—but how quickly those three Cs go out the window when confronted by a cute, furry face. (Actually, we could make it 4 Cs: Compassion is a big part of the De Prophetis’s mindset, even for the most difficult of clients.)
