INTELLIGENCE: FLEA WASH WITH THAT?

IAN HARVEY
December 6, 2007

On a good day at the city car wash, there will be a couple of Chevys, a Toyota or two - and maybe the odd Labrador retriever.

Along with the coin-operated car bays at his business near Gerrard and Victoria Park, the entrepreneur has just installed a K9 pet wash station. "It's huge up and down the [West] coast," he says. "So I figured, why not here?"
After a few weeks, Mr. Gontoulas says, the machine is doing good business at his Quarry Beach Car Wash. The main customers: Locals whose dogs get muddy while running off-leash in the swampy land just to the north, a former quarry and municipal dump.

The pet wash is a smaller, gentler affair than a car wash; there are no power washers or giant scrubbing brushes. Dogs are coaxed up a ramp into a waist-high, stainless steel tub. The owners can spray them clean through a flexible hose with a selection of sprays: rinse, shampoo, tick and flea wash, conditioner and blow dry the loved pet.

(Owners are advised to bring their own towels.)
Elaborate? It sounds like it. But since most dogs don't relish a bath, many owners find it less stressful than getting them in and out of a regular tub at home, Mr. Gontoulas explains. "I have an elderly couple who loved it for their collie," he says, "because they worried about slipping in the bathroom."

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