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PetSmart groomer fired after dog abuse caught on camera

KATY, Texas (WCMH) – A groomer is out of a job after she was caught abusing a small dog during a grooming session.

When Terah Leder walked through the grooming area of a Katy, Texas PetSmart on Thursday, she immediate knew something was wrong.  She saw a groomer working on a small dog, but the aggressive way the groomer handled the dog didn’t sit right with her. So, she pulled out her phone and started recording.

“I was trembling, freaking out,” Leder told KTRK. “I couldn’t believe what I had just seen.”

Leder is heard shouting at the groomer in the 2-minute video before she went to the manager to explain what was happening. After she spoke with the manager, she waited for the dog’s owner to arrive.

“If that were my dog, I would want to know that that happened to her,” Leder said.

An hour later, Brooke Vowers came to pick up the dog, a Shih Tzu named Boo. She had dropped Boo off hours earlier and had no idea what had happened since.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ Just kinda like confused, you know,” Vowers said.

After she watched the video Leder recorded, she posted it to social media.

“Because that was just a tidbit of the video.  I’d hate to think what would happen in four hours,” Vowers said. “The fact that that could happen to anyone else’s dog is just concerning to me.”

PetSmart told KTRK that the way the dog was treated is “completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” The company also said that the groomer in question has been fired.