Hi, my name is Maria and i'm a dog groomer.
Today's video is a little bit different to what i usually do on my channel, but I
just wanted to have a bit of a heart-to-heart with all the people who
keep us in business - dog owners. Please keep in
mind that this video is not designed to offend anyone. I'm simply here to educate
dog owners and clear some of the misconceptions
they may have about what dog groomers do on a day-to-day basis. Now, i'm sure we've
all seen those horrendous tabloids all over the place
that say absolutely horrendous things about dog groomers. About how a dog has
been kicked or an ear has been super glued back on
after it being cut off, and all these horrible things that would
make any human being absolutely livid. While
incidents like these are actually incredibly rare,
we do often see dog owners go on social media to say bad things about
us, the groomer, when something does happen by accident in a salon. Sometimes
I feel like these things that are said are slightly unjustified,
and may sometimes just come down to the dog owner not quite understanding
why we do what we do. And that is why I wanted to make this video - to just kind
of explain some of the misconceptions, misunderstandings that
dog owners may have when it comes to dog grooming. Every
dog groomer will offer some kind of service for puppies.
This may be called several things: puppy intro,
puppy trim, puppy groom, and whatever the name,
the service is pretty much the same thing. Any dog that requires
regular grooming throughout it's life should get used to all the weird noises
and smells in a grooming parlor as soon as possible. And
on top of all these weird things going on they are
also being handled by essentially a complete stranger. So it is
highly recommended that puppy introductions are started
as soon as the puppy's allowed outside. So essentially as soon as the puppy has
had puppy jabs and the vet has said "Great
your puppy can now go outside", you should really be looking at booking
a little session with your local groomer. A puppy intro only usually includes a
bath and blow dry, nail clip, ear clean, little hygiene trim
and just a tidy under the puppy's eyes. This is just to get the puppy used all
the weird and wonderful sensations in the parlor.
And we are not going to cut your puppy's coat!
It's actually really common for dog groomers to get a call from a dog owner
saying that: "Hi, I would like to book in my six
month old puppy please". No prior visits to the groomer, it's just
now the puppy is six months old and now we will bring the puppy in to you.
And for some reason a lot of people seem to be under the understanding that a
puppy does not need to be groomed until it's six
months old. I don't know where this comes from, maybe it's breeders telling people
that "Oh yeah, you don't need any coat care until six
months old, that's when the the coat changes", or if it's just misinformation
being spread on social media. Especially with high maintenance coats
like any kind of Poodle mix, any kind of Bichon mix, obviously purebred
Bichons, Poodles, anything like that. They will require daily brushing to keep
any knots and matting away. And sadly because people to seem to take
the advice of "nothing until six months old" very
literally, we do have a lot of completely solidly mattered puppies come
in. This can be a completely shocking experience to your
puppy, as they will just have absolutely no idea what's going on. They
are just thrown into a completely new situation and all of a sudden there is
some strange person just tugging at all these tight mats on their bodies. And
groomers do keep asking this question: Why does this
happen? And honestly I think it may just be a marketing trick
by breeders who don't necessarily own the woolly coated parent. They may
have the Cocker parent and then they have just
borrowed the Poodle parent off someone else, so they don't actually
know what kind of maintenance is involved.
This is why it's so important to always do plenty of research before you get a
puppy or even an adult dog. You just need to be prepared to spend a
lot more money on regular grooming every you know, four to six weeks in some
cases. So what does happen if a coat is far too
matted to be brushed out? The most humane thing
is just to clip the coat off and start from scratch.
We do often have people pleading with us "Oh please just keep my dog fluffy", "Oh
please just brush it out", or "Please just take the matts out and leave the rest".
And sadly sometimes that just isn't possible.
Trying to dematt a dog or trying to brush the knots out
is incredibly painful for your dog. As you can imagine,
if you didn't brush your hair for six weeks and then went to your hairdresser
and asked for them to pull the matts out, you would tell them to stop within
minutes. The matts will be pulling at the skin -
you can just imagine hair just twisting and twisting and twisting
and then pinching the skin all over your dog's body, and then you are asking a
groomer to hurt your dog, to try and get these matts out. It is just
not fair on your dog and like I said, you wouldn't go through that kind of
pain so please don't expect us to put your dog through that either.
Dog groomers do also operate under the Animal Welfare Act,
and it is against the act to cause an animal any unnecessary pain or harm,
and dematting does come under that category. We also get told that we are
just "taking the easy way out" when we clip off a dog rather than
trying to brush the matts out. And honestly this couldn't be further from
the truth. It is such a skill to try and maneuver a
sharp blade between the tight matt and the skin, especially when it's already
been pulled so tight because of the matting.
Sometimes we only have a few millimeters of space to get the blade through,
and unfortunately, you know, accidents do happen. We may
sometimes graze the dog's skin when it's being pulled so hard
in so many different directions. But it takes so much skill
and patience to remove a really badly matted coat.
And sometimes accidents do happen. We do our absolute best to avoid them,
but we are dealing with a live and moving object that doesn't understand
what we're doing and very sharp equipment. And
please trust me when i say that every time something like that happens
we are absolutely heartbroken! The last thing we want to do is to hurt a dog in
our care. And if something does happen, all
groomers should be fully insured against anything like this. So if you do end up
having to take your dog to the vet to get any kind of treatment or have
stitches or anything like that, we are insured to pay for your vet bill.
Naturally we just ask for proof from the vet to say that
"Oh yeah, this was definitely done by the groomers, here's an itemized bill,
here you go.", so we can then just forward that onto our insurance and they will
then deal with it. Please don't be offended if we do ask for all this
information, because just like with any kind of
insurance company, they do require quite a lot of proof to be able to do any kind
of payments. And just like your dog may have an
accident in the salon, so can we. And unfortunately this is
often down to the owner not disclosing any bad behavior with us prior to the
grooming appointment. If we do ask about your dog's behavior,
please please do not keep anything from us.
If you tell us that your dog bites, it's not going to make us go
"Woah okay I'm not gonna groom your dog", it is just so we are prepared for any
kind of sudden change in behavior, if there's any kind of
trigger, so if we touch your dog's foot, do their
nails or clip underneath the pads, we know that your dog may react to it
and then we can prepare for that by either muzzling the dog or just slightly
tightening their neck strap so they cannot just
spin around and go for our hands. Okay, I'm going to show you some photos
of injuries caused by dogs. If you are
someone who finds injuries distressing, I do recommend
looking away for a little bit.
Most of us groomers are actually self-employed, and often do work alone. So
if anything does happen, if we get attacked by an aggressive dog,
there may not be anyone there to help us out. If we are
bitten, especially anywhere on our hands or arms, it can mean that we can't work
for several weeks or even months while we
recover. And bad enough bites can be career ending. You may say that "Oh
being bitten just comes with the job, what's the big deal get over it", but no
one should expect to be injured while they're working.
If you worked at Tesco stacking shelves you wouldn't expect a
massive shelf to fall on you, would you? So the same goes for dog groomers - we
need to know that we are safe day to day while we work. We often get people trying
to haggle the cost of our services. We get so many different reasonings, we
have "Oh why are you so expensive, the groomer down the road is 10 pound
cheaper than you", "Oh what if i do XYZ at home,
would that knock money off the price?" or "Oh you're more expensive than my
hairdresser why is that?". A lot of groomers don't actually charge
enough for what they do. We are very skilled workers, we train for
years spending thousands and thousands of
pounds and even after qualifying spend countless
hours attending seminars and just training. It's a constantly
evolving industry and we have to keep up with it.
And not only that, like I said earlier most of us are self-employed. This means
that we don't just automatically get holiday pay, sick pay, guaranteed days off,
self-employed groomers have to pay tax, national insurance,
shop insurance, business rates, water, electricity,
constant maintenance on the equipment, replacing equipment,
the list just goes on. Us charging say 40 pounds for your dog does not mean
that we just put the 40 pounds in our pocket.
Most of that money goes straight back into the business, and we'll be lucky if
we see a third of the money. And I find it
incredibly unfair that our services are being compared to
a hairdresser's. The huge difference with us is, even though both of us hold
scissors and clippers for a living, you are very unlikely to try and spin
around in your chair, bite your hairdresser, use the seat as a
toilet and you don't have your entire body
covered in hair that needs clipping off regularly. But if you were to compare
animals to humans, your dog is also getting a mani pedi,
a let's say a bikini wax, blow dry and full styling, and perfume
for free as well. But if for whatever reason and you're
just not satisfied with the service you've been provided,
please instead of running straight over to social media to badmouth your groomer,
please talk to them. See if there is some kind of solution you
can come to, even if it's just that "Oh something wasn't quite done right". If it
was just a case of one side of the face being slightly
longer than the other, or something just not been quite even
enough, we are more than capable of just fixing it if you just let us know
quick enough. Usually we ask you to do this within sort of 48 hours of the
groom, while the coat is still clean and we
can just quickly go over it again. But anything over this we would need to then
rewash the dog and then depending on the situation, charge you for the bath again.
So please just be prompt with it, just talk to your dog groomer. We
we are here to help out. And if something has happened,
there's always going to be two sides to the story. So if you're just so quick to
run to some kind of private dog breed group on Facebook just to say
bad things about your groomer, you're not giving your groomer the chance to say
their side of the story as well. It could just be that your dog was
unsettled for whatever reason during the groom, and that's why your beloved dog
doesn't quite look as good as they should, or maybe
your dog was just shaved down to the skin
because the coat was so matted that there just wasn't
any other option but to shave down. And unfortunately our current culture does
really feed into the mentality that "the customer is always right"
and a lot of people tend to just keep on going higher and higher and higher,
find some other way of complaining until they get their way.
And in some cases, especially with self-employed dog groomers,
having this kind of negative feedback just
festering in some kind of dog group on Facebook
can be so damaging you may end someone's career
because you are not willing to sit down with your groomer
and just talk it through. Instead some people start a witch-hunt and
name and shame the groomer and say that "This is the most despicable thing that
they've ever done to my dog! How dare they! They should be out of business!
Let's shut them down!" For what? If we had to shave your dog's
coat down, it grows back. We are here
to look after your dog, we would never hurt your dog on purpose.
And if we refuse to give you a refund because we have still provided you with
a service, it doesn't give you the right to then go
onto Facebook or Twitter or wherever you might be, and
try and ruin our careers. So please next time
before you run straight onto Facebook, stop for a second,
have a little think and chat with your groomer, because we are here to help.
Okay, that got a little bit heavy towards the end. I think this covers
most of the very common things we see and hear about
on a daily basis, but if you feel like you've got any other questions about dog
grooming and what happens when we have your dog in,
please do leave me a comment down below and I will answer to the best of my
ability. I'm not saying that I know everything,
but ask away and I'll see what i can do. Thank you for watching this what feels
like such a long video. I really appreciate you sticking to the end,
and I would love for you to share this video with anyone who owns a dog and may
find this video helpful. Thanks for watching, bye guys!