Grooming Process

The following are the four steps in our grooming process that we feel insure a quality grooming experience for your pet:

Prepping

Prepping is the first step of the process where preliminary brushing and pre-clipping occurs to prepare a dog for a thorough bath. Dogs that are brought to us for haircuts are first given a rough-cut which is designed to set patterns and set initial hair length. Dogs scheduled for just baths are brushed out well in this stage to remove undercoat (dead hair), mats, and tangles that interfere with the bathing process. By doing a preliminary cut or brushing, we only wash dog hair that is intended to be left on the dog. All dogs have their toenails trimmed during this step.

Bathing

During this step all dogs are scrubbed down to their skin with soft scrub brushes. Our primary shampoo is Protein, Aloe and Lanolin which is an excellent cleaning shampoo designed to enrich and enhance the coat. We also have moisturizing shampoos for flaky dandruff (dry skin) treatments and flea shampoo for treatment of flea problems. Our hand-held sprayers have various speeds; we begin by rinsing the dog’s coat and then increase the jet speed so that your dog is gently massaged while shedding hair and dandruff are loosened and the skin is thoroughly cleaned.

Drying

During this process all dogs are put on an elevated table where we dry their coats with forced air dryers. We manually dry dogs two-thirds of the way dry. The forced air dryer concentrates air into a nozzle which is whisked briskly around the dog’s body. Not only is the dog’s coat getting dried but this powerful forced air dryer blows out additional dead hair and skin. Large dogs dry completely from fans blowing on them in an enclosed dog run. Small dogs dry completely in crates under cage dryers.

Finishing

Dogs receiving haircuts are clipped again during this step, this time with the focus being on a precision cut where the groomer fine tunes the clipper work and scissor cuts. Where the prepping stage is a pre-cut, the finishing stage finalizes the haircut; the groomer goes over the dog completely to set a quality finish. Dogs that have a bath only are given a final brushing and combing. Our policy is that we are able to run a comb through any dog’s coat that is left long. This insures that mats, tangles, and undercoat are properly removed and the dog is left with fluffy, soft hair.