Let's Remember the Extreme Poodle Grooming Show on TLC That Never Was

By Rich Juzwiak | September 17, 2019 | 7:00pm

Entertainment TV

On Monday night, TLC aired a one-off special called Wait! That’s a Dog?, which you (like me) may have missed when it aired nine years ago under the name Extreme Poodles. Ugh, it was so good. It was so good, I made a montage of highlights and it was only when I was finished that I realized the material was old. You know what? I stand by the montage. Great show. Worth a revisit.

Imagine Toddlers & Tiaras with poodles and neon dye and you’re like 80 percent there. The episode followed a few contestants in the world of creative grooming—that special breed of dog grooming that involves transforming poodles into all manner of creatures via strategic scissoring and paints (before our eyes we watched a poodle become a roller derby girl, and another was made a lion). Along the way, we met an owner whose life goal is to own a camel (failing that, she turned to the next best thing: sculpting her poodle into a camel), a dog named Falkor (hello, Neverending Story reference) who undergoes Reiki treatment to calm his nerves, another poodle who is referred to as “metrosexual” by his owner, and a presentation of Cherokee pride during a dog show.