Heidi Fleiss still bullish on pet-care business

By Joe Schoenmann

Sunday, July 25, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Ex-madame then wannabe brothel owner Heidi Fleiss is trying once again to establish a dog-grooming and kennel business.

Doesn’t Fleiss live in Pahrump? And didn’t she already have problems with a dog-grooming business?

In October, Fleiss’ attempt to buy a dog-grooming business was foiled in court because the business was part of the unfinished divorce proceedings of its previous owner. But in an interview last week, Fleiss said the matter has been cleared up. She recently gained Paradise Town Board approval for a 2,000-square-foot business in a shopping center at Bermuda Road and Silverado Ranch Boulevard, in the southeast valley. She and her business partner, Jessica Skinner, will address the Clark County Planning Commission on Aug. 3.

She said her new business will be for grooming dogs and will include a state-of-the-art overnight boarding doghouse where owners will be able to log into their computers to gaze upon their beloved pets, whose image will be broadcast to them via webcams affixed to each dog cage.

Why is Fleiss turning to the dogs as a business?

Why does anyone go into business? Many people love animals more than people and are willing to pay handsomely to keep their pets happy. Fleiss is a businesswoman. She said she tuned to the business after attending a shareholders meeting for a major pet store. When she found out its annual revenue was in the billions, it floored her.

“My whole entire life I’ve been in the wrong business,” she said. “How on earth did I miss this one?”

And she owns animals, many of which screeched loudly in the background as we talked by phone.

Who was doing the screeching?

Not who. What. Fleiss owns 20 macaws that came to her, she explained rapid-fire, from a Pahrump neighbor — a former madame and exotic pet owner, Fleiss said. One day four years ago, the neighbor had a medical emergency and as paramedics took her away, she told Fleiss: “You take care of my birds.” The woman died, and Fleiss has kept the birds.

“It’s really hard, because I spend almost everything I have on them,” she said.

So why doesn’t she get rid of them?

Well, there’s a silver lining here.

The chaotic life of Heidi Fleiss and her birds has led to interest by a well-known reality TV show production company. It wants to do a show about her, the birds and her hectic life.

“It’s about how I live, how I can function, my extreme lifestyle,” she said.

In another show being considered, she said, she would be the host as “extreme” pet owners are filmed and interviewed. “Each week, we’d profile five people and their pets. It would be extreme in every sense of the word.” For instance, Fleiss said, she knows a woman in Beverly Hills, Calif., who adorns her pets in diamond-studded collars and other expensive gifts.

“These birds have brought me everything I wanted in my life and I have to do the same for them,” Fleiss said.

•••

The godawful heat isn’t just uncomfortable, it’s deadly. In 1997, then-Clark County Medical Examiner Sheldon Green told me that 108 is the “temperature of death” because, with extended exposure to that much heat, “no one survives.” But it doesn’t have to reach that temperature for people to dehydrate, succumb and become silent guests of the coroner.

Are we seeing an increased body count this year, because it’s been so hot?

As of July 9, the coroner had registered nine heat-related deaths in the county. There could be more, but it can take six to eight weeks to make a cause of death determination. The average age of death was 64, with the oldest being 81 and the youngest 43. Two of the deaths occurred in April, four in June and three in July. From the National Weather Service, the high temperatures for the days of the four June deaths and three July deaths in order were 103, 106, 105, 108, 103, 103 and 106. In each of these cases, the cause of death was one of the following: “exposure to elements, environmental exposure, heat stroke, heat stress, hyperthermia and environmental heat.”

In all of 2009, the coroner registered 20 heat-related deaths. The first was in January, but the heat source for that death was a trailer fire. The second was in June, the next 14 in July, and the last four in August. The average age of death was 58 in 2009, with the youngest an infant of 4 months and the oldest 95.