Balyn, it must be said, did not have a good relationship with canines.
Whether it was the mangy, half-starved, probably rabid animals that accompanied the huntsmen of Yharnam and the Forbidden Woods or the massive feral hounds of the Pthumerians with their gouging horns and fiery breath, dogs had not been among Balyn's favorite creatures to see during his time as a Hunter. And that was just the actual dogs, not getting into the issue of monstrous beasts that were somehow dog-adjacent like the lava-vomiting, fire-spewing "watchdogs" of the Old Lords (seriously, what was it with the Pthumerians and literal firedogs, anyway?), or the scourge beasts that so many Yharnamites had become, or the antlered dog-thing that had been the final fate of the Vicar of the Healing Church's thirst for the Old Blood.
Balyn didn't know if he'd been a cat person before coming to Yharnam, what with the amnesia and all, but he was definitely one now!
This was the reason why he looked somewhere between repulsed and horrified by the latest job suggestion that he'd been offered by the tall, pale blonde who acted as clerk for the Yharnam Employment Agency.
"You've got to be kidding me!" he all but screamed, causing more than one person in the room to look up from their paperwork.
The clerk, however, did not change her expression in the slightest, not so much as by the flicker of a muscle. Histrionics, clearly, had long become old hat to her. Always presuming, of course, that she wasn't actually some kind of marionette brought to life by eldritch forces from beyond human comprehension.
In Yharnam, that wasn't nearly as weird as it sounded.
Balyn pinched himself just in case, but it seemed that he was not in fact dreaming. Unfortunately, that also meant that what he'd thought the clerk had said was in fact very real, as she swiftly made clear.
"I am not paid nearly enough to make jokes, nor would the clients who faithfully list employment opportunities with us appreciate it if I did so."
"Then you're…really asking me to…"
She did not let out a long, aggrieved sigh of utter and complete exasperation, and yet the merest twitch of her eyebrows somehow conveyed that exact sentiment. Presuming that they moved at all. They might still have been painted on. Which would not have effected their ability to convey emotion.
"Yes. The Olde Crematorium Graveyard Dance and Quilting Society of Hemwick is looking for a dog groomer, to give shampoos, nail trims, skin care treatments, and similar works. Really, I should think you'd be more sympathetic. Holding the handles of those blades in their jaws all the time makes it very hard for them to get their teeth cleaned, and just think of how that wrapping of spiked leather belts they wear must chafe those poor animals terribly."