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On the east end of Long Island, where .0001 percent go for summer, the newest luxury flex isn’t a private pickleball court or a backyard helipad. She is a live-in dog groomer.
“There’s something about the Hamptons that breeds this kind of thing,” says Lisa Hartman, whose dog-sitting service has brokered nearly a half-dozen live-in arrangements at the home. “You know who’s here. They want their time. They want to go out to dinner at Nick & Toni’s or play golf at Maidstone. And they’re rich enough to hire a dog sitter. She’s just another one on their staff.”
According to Hartman, this all goes back to the COVID-19 crisis, when everyone was adopting puppies. After the pandemic ended and people resumed their lives, they suddenly found themselves with full-grown dogs that didn’t want to leave them home alone. “The dogs had big problems,” she says. “People didn’t teach them how to be alone.”
That’s when people started hiring full-time dog groomers, paying up to $55 an hour plus room and board in the huge mansions perched on the dunes. “It’s a better life for a dog than going back and forth to the city on a helicopter,” says Hartman.
Of course, here in Hollywood, spoiling pets is not at all unheard of. But as far as Rampling has been able to determine, live-in dog groomers haven’t yet become a thing in Los Angeles. “I’d never heard of it before,” says Joey Richardson, a popular Beverly Hills dog walker who has looked after canines for Larry David, Sacha Baron Cohen and Sarah Silverman. “I mean, I stayed at Larry’s house when he was gone for a month, but I never stayed there while he was there.”
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Also in the Rampling Reporter:
Why did Richard Nixon suddenly go viral? Is Dean Cain right about Supergirl’s earrings?
This story appeared in the June 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe.
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