Rika Otsuka’s Puppy Love: Canine Clients Respond to Japanese, English

Rika Otsuka keeps up a constant stream of chatter, speaking to her clients in English and Japanese, and ducking out of the way when they decide to shake after getting hosed down.

As she works on a little fox terrier she’s been grooming for nearly eight years—its owner having followed her from a previous shop—she says the dog is much more calm and relaxed with her now than when he was a puppy.

“This guy was so bad. He wanted to bite,” says Otsuka, a Spring Valley resident. “When the customer called, I tell him, ‘Must muzzle!’ ”

Now they’re old friends, and the trusting terrier even obliges as she brushes his teeth.

It’s no secret to Otsuka why she gets along so well with dogs.

“I think a long, long time ago before I was born I was a dog,” she says, before bursting into a long laugh.

Otsuka, 52, a pet stylist at Star Dogs Professional Dog Grooming in La Mesa, has been working with dogs much of her life.

As a high school girl growing up near Tokyo, she got her first part-time job as a groomer. When she moved to the United States about 14 years ago, she enhanced her experience by going to a grooming school in El Cajon to learn what she calls “the American style.”

Since then, she’s worked at several shops around San Diego, including two others in La Mesa before coming to Star Dogs almost four years ago.

When she first came to America, she looked for a job in computer programming—the role she had in Japan for close to 13 years—but says her English skills weren’t up to par.

That hasn’t stopped her, though.

“I think about it, but I’m not good in English. I’m still bad, but 10 years ago, more bad,” she says, stopping to laugh again. “But I think about it, and dogs don’t need English. So I thought, ‘I’ll be a dog groomer.’ ”

While her English may not be good enough to be a stand-up comic, her sense of humor and can-do attitude has earned her steady employment and a loyal clientele.

Plus, she says, all that computer programming experience hasn’t gone to waste.

“It’s the same thing. I program the dog,” she says, laughing.

When she’s asked to spell her last name, she hands a visitor her business card, while spelling it out loud: “O-t-s-u-k-a.”

“Same like the baseball player,” she says, referring to former Padres reliever Aki Otsuka. “But he’s not my husband, OK?” Which, of course, prompts Otsuka to laugh.

A Way With Dogs

Otsuka works five days a week at Star Dogs, which is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The number of dogs she grooms varies daily—from as few as four to as many as 10 on weekends. She does little dogs and big dogs, calm dogs and squirmy ones.

Dogs get bathed, dried and brushed, and their nails clipped. The tools of her trade are a variety of scissors, clippers, brushes, blow-dryers and soap. She has a washroom, with a small wash area for the little dogs and a human-size shower for the big ones.

She says the little dogs and big ones present different challenges.

“The big dogs, very smart and easy,” she says. “But they’re hard to move around. They have a lot of power. Little dogs, sometimes they’re kind of spoiled. Sometimes they bite and squirm and I say, ‘No good! No good!’ ”

She says the hardest part of her job is getting the dogs to cooperate.

“Dog control is very hard,” she says. “Everybody can do grooming. … But it’s very hard to keep dogs in control. Then it’s easy to groom.”

As she talks, she demonstrates on a Bichon Frise she’s holding in her lap, controlling him with one hand while clipping his nails with the other.

“Be very careful. No accidents,” she says. “My finger, OK (to cut), but dog is the customer. Not cut him, not hurt his fingers. (Cut) my finger? That’s OK,” she says, laughing again.

Her favorite part of the job is when the owner returns to claim a clean, cropped canine.

“I love the part, giving the dog back to the owner and the owner screaming, ‘Oh, my God, he looks so different!’ I love that. Everybody’s happy.”

James Stein has been bringing his two little poodles to Otsuka for more than a year and says he wouldn’t take them anywhere else.

“She’s wonderful,” he says. “The best groomer I’ve ever had. She’s a real pro.”

Stein says he found her via recommendation from a local pet shop.

“I met Rika, and that’s it,” he says. “It’s the first place I’ve ever felt comfortable leaving my dogs. She’s always up, friendly and accommodating from the word go.”

First Humans, Then Dogs

Otsuka was raised in Japan by her grandparents and extended family, but visited San Diego often as a child to visit her now-deceased father (an American citizen) and mother who lived here.

After working part-time as a groomer in high school, she became what she calls a “human beautician” for about 10 years before becoming a computer programmer to make more money to support her three children after a divorce.

Today her grown children still live in the area, so she gets to see them often. And she tries to visit Japan at least once a year, although she says it won’t happen in 2011.

When she came to the States, she arrived not only with her children, but also with two dogs.  She says even as a little girl, she’d always had dogs and been comfortable around them.

She says most of her customers now are regulars, who take good care of their dogs and bring them in every few weeks. It makes her sad when, on rare occasions, an owner brings in a dog that has been neglected.

“Sometimes, dogs come in all matted, lots of fleas, and you can’t see eyes,” she says. “But I can make them very cute.”

She says one of the worst instance of neglect came about a year ago, when a customer dropped off his dog for grooming and then never came back to pick it up.

“I baby-sit him for two weeks,” she says, showing off a picture she took of him. “I called the animal shelter and the police. … But two weeks I baby-sit. But he has (a new) owner now. He’s happy now.”

These days, for one of the few times in her life, Otsuka has no dog at home. She doesn’t have enough time to devote to them, she says.

Instead, she has three cats.

“Cats are easy,” she says. “But they don’t like to be groomed.”