I can do that! How hard can it be?

Tales of misplaced confidence.

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It’s really hard to get an appointment at the dog groomers. I’m not sure why this is. They’re always booked up about three months in advance. There’s better availability at Bouchon Racine or with an NHS dentist.

And of course, I’m never organised enough to book 3 months in advance. Like almost everything, I sort stuff out only at the point it’s become unbearable.

So I can’t be expected to know three months in advance that my dog will barely be able to see as his eyebrows are so long and has matted legs and is basically wearing a thick, long fur coat during a heatwave. (Small exaggeration in case the RSPCA are reading.)

You can ask to be put on a cancellation list, but nobody cancels. These appointments are gold dust. A last-minute knighting from the King? No, sorry! Can’t miss my slot at Barking Beautiful.

All this means that I’ve sometimes looked at my scruffy dog and had these words creep into my mind: how hard can it be? How hard can it be to just do it myself? Even though I know groomers often do City and Guilds courses or apprenticeships and spend many hours learning the craft. So these words shouldn’t even be on the threshold of my thoughts. But really though, how hard can it be?

It’s a question that also ignores my lack of hand-eye coordination and one other major thing. How much my dog hates being groomed. He’s a sweet, gentle boy, but has to be muzzled during grooming. He was once described by a groomer as a little shit. Which I thought was quite extreme and never went back.

But anyway, how hard can it be?

I bought some clippers, tethered him to a garden chair and prepared some tasty treats. It was going to be like a spa day for him! If at spa days, they tethered you by the neck to a garden chair.

I’m sorry to say, he cowered throughout his spa day. And it took me a while to realise you need to always go in the same direction with the clippers or it looks like they’ve had about 18 different very small operations.

The legs went better than I expected, but for some reason, his tolerance severely waned by the last leg, so I had to give up and he had one hairy leg. And he wouldn’t let me near his head, so he still had a massive, furry head. It looked like it had been badly photoshopped onto him. Or that he was a Bo Selecta character.

The whole experience was not dissimilar to the time I’d had enough of the Artex walls in my kitchen (understandably), so decided I was the right person to plaster over them. Once again, no skills, no experience. Just the thought of how hard can it be driving me on. It’s very hard as it turns out. Especially as I was just using a tube of Polyfilla and a small scraper. I gave up after doing less than a square foot and got a professional in.

Somewhat unbelievably, a few years later, in a different home, I tried to do it again. I hadn’t even learned from a relatively recent experience.

I once had a very big, heavy microwave delivered. It was one of those ones that you can also use as an actual oven. It was in a box on the floor, but I wanted to use it straight away. The box was so heavy that I could barely push it with my foot, but I didn’t want to wait for my then-boyfriend to get home, so I tried to pick it up myself. I did manage it, but then had a funny turn, called NHS Direct and ended up in A&E. Which was embarrassing when I kept having to explain what had happened.

Where does this insane confidence for areas way out of my expertise come from? Because when I’m faced with doing something that I have years of experience in, like my job, the only words in my head on repeat are, “I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I won’t be able to do it.”

I have to avoid walking past hospitals as I’m worried that someone will come out panicking and shouting, “Are there any heart surgeons around? Our surgeon has died mid-operation, and we need someone to finish it!” And I’d be thinking, “Well, I could do that. How hard can it be?”