3 Petsmart Groomers Abused My Dog Right In Front Of Me

I went to Petsmart, location: NM, to get my dogs nails trimmed because they’re too thick for any of the clippers I have at home. I’ve been doing this for years and never had any issues until very recently. A month ago they told me that she nipped at them and didn’t say anything else. I thought maybe they nicked her nail quick or something. She’s never been aggressive towards me or anything.

Yesterday I took her to get them done again and they said they require me to stay in store because it’ll take 5 mins. I was planning on staying in he store anyways and I said okay and just walked around the store for a minute. I looped around and walked back to the grooming area when it was about 8-10 minutes because they’re too thick never called me and I wanted to see if they were done.

The groomer’s has a big glass window with a tint design so that you can only see in through little bubbles. I could see my dog clearly through one of the bubbles and I walked up and saw three groomers restraining her, one hitting her in the face and another gripping her head insanely hard. She looked terrified and tried to get out of the collar tether they had her on and the one hitting her the face grabbed her muzzle and hit her again. It was hard. For very needed context- this dog is 30 pounds. She’s a small corgi and very easily HUMANELY managed by someone who knows what they’re doing.

I made eye contact with the one that hit her and started recording, but I couldn’t get anything with the tint and they stopped as soon as they saw me. I walked to the front to see if I could grab her and they were walking her up and acted like everything was normal. I asked how it went and they said everything went well. I didn’t know what to do at all so I just paid and left and called some family members to try and figure out what I just witnessed and how to proceed. I then called the Petsmart corporate office and reported the groomers. They said they’ll escalate it and call me back by Tuesday.

My dog won’t let me anywhere near her feet to take photos of her paws and she’s very clearly traumatized from what happened. She has been reluctant to let me try to put butter on her paws or anything lately, and even nipped at me once I tried a few weeks ago. I am scared this isnt the first time they were aggressive with her and that’s why she gets so upset when I try to do our normal grooming routine. I can see that they clipped her quick on one of her paws, and the nail they clipped is a little cracked. She was VERY obviously in pain, scared and needed someone to comfort and calm her. They did nothing to call me even though they knew I was the store and they instead abused my dog and then lied and pretended like everything was fine when I asked about it.

Do I have any legal recourse? I am so scared that they’ve done this to other dogs because three of them were doing this and nobody in the grooming department stepped in or did ANYTHING to stop them. It was a normal business day for them. I’m sick and I’m furious and want to make sure there’s no way they can do this to another dog because it absolutely broke my heart to see what happened.