MOST mutts would yelp "hogwash!" to a dogwash. But Lorna White, of Nether Poppleton, York, knows how to pamper pooches with a big splash of panache.

She has started up a Dial-A-Dogwash, a franchise which has become a dog ablution paradise on wheels, a van which roves York and North Yorkshire catering for unkempt rovers. And it's booming.

But even as Lorna was booked out with appointments right up to January 10, she had to do something about her own dog, muck-rolling Murphy, allegedly a Lakeland Cross, who leaped into the open-doored Citroen Relay van for yet another groom with a view.

The vehicle is equipped with a specially-designed fibreglass bath, high sided so that any ordinary-sized hound would have difficulty leaping out. Then there are the special restraining reins just to make sure.

Murphy had the usual - a good brushing, nail check and clip (if agreeable), followed by that nice warm bath, insecticidal shampoo, coat conditioner and towel-then-electric hand-held turbo doggy drier.

The result: A Murphy full of gleam and gloss. A superclean canine. No woof edges.

The idea to take on the new franchise happened shortly after Lorna married James White, for 14 years a veterinary nurse and now working as a sales rep for Psizer, the animal pharmaceutical company.

He was from York. She was from Glagow where, as a management expert with MI Technologies, she trained management for warehouse operators, retailers and the NHS.

Lorna said: "Having managed people for so long, dogs are a doddle."

The deluge of demand for her travelling doggy-bath service following an advertisement in the Evening Press, has convinced her to branch out. By next September she hopes to have a second Dial-A-Dogwash van emblazoned with the numbers 01904 789804 and expects sales to go through the roof. Or even the woof.

Updated: 09:48 Monday, December 20, 2004