How I Became a Groomer

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Hello, my name is Luke Jones. I am Susan Peter's son. I would like to tell a little about my self and what it means to me to work with cats & dogs.

I am a dog & cat groomer, age 23, happily married with 2 kids, I live in a small town in Oklahoma (where everyone knows your name). I started working with small animals when I was 19. I was Susan's bather for a couple of years while learning the inns and outs of pet grooming. She taught me the different breeds of dogs and cats (along with time at the library).

I also learned how not to get wet when bathing animals. But most importantly, I learned respect for all cats and dogs. When you have a ticked off cat and you don't respect it is going to teach you a thing or two. Same for dogs, they really aren't different in that respect, they have teeth also.

After a year or so my mother (Susan peters) started teaching me how to groom one kind of dog, the schnauzer. I loved the schnauzer they were calm and they, for the most part, were a simple hair cut. I started by shaving there back's and faces. Although I did not do the scissor work for a while, until I felt confident, I would soon be able to pick up a pair of scissors.

After a month or so of shaving backs and faces mom decided its time to do my own scissor work. I nervously picked up those giant scissors and made my first snip. Well that went well enough there was no chop line no stray hairs and it was even, I felt good so I went to make another cut with the scissors (10 inches long), disaster! The dog jerked his leg while I was mid cut and slice, there went the back of the skirt. With my jaw on the floor I grabbed up the dog and told mom, "I think I made a boo boo." Mom came to the rescue and cleaned up the leg and finished the skirt of the schnauzer.

Mom began to scissor the face, but only half, then looked at me and said 'copy that'. I did copy it and I did it well. I was proud and felt as if I was almost a groomer. Almost! That's when I realized there are only 300, or more, other hair cuts to learn. When I sent the schnauzer home the owner asked me who did the haircut. I said, of course, Mom!! (I thought she was in trouble). The lady gave her a $10 tip. I was amazed and happy to see that my hair cut wasn't a failure.

More Start Grooming Stories

• Learning To Groom A Poodle
• Learning To Groom A Bichon Frise (click here to see the story)

After grooming under my mom for a while she was confident in me and customers were asking for me specifically. She felt it was time for me to spread my wings and fly. So she opened another grooming shop in another town about 20 minutes form here and left me to handle the one that was already established. Could I actually handle this? My wife and I discussed it for a while we came up with a system and stuck with it. It worked, we were proud of our selves we successfully ran a business. After about 6 months of us working 6 days a week we got kind of tired so we hired a bather to come work for us. That did not work out well they did dent know the system and with the system broke the days seemed to go from 8:00am-4:00pm to 8:00am-6:00pm. And of course the bather did dent know the difference. We finally got the bather trained and we were able to get things done much faster. The bather bathes, my wife answers the phones and takes customers, and I dry the dogs and give them the hair cuts. Ahh the system is back in place all is good. Wonder what else is gong to come our way? After that month of craziness I think we can handle anything. Well almost anything.

We had a lady call us and want in @ 3:00pm and we closed a 4:00pm so we let her in (dummy us) she wanted to get her dog shaved and a bath. So I did the hair cut while she was at wal-mart, rushing through as fast as I can to get the job done in an hour. My wife bathed the bald dog and towel dried it and we both used hair driers to get it dry.

The lady was back, we looked at the clock it's only been 35 minutes (success we did it in under an hour) the lady paid the bill took the dog home and all was good. The next day a lady calls us up "how much do you charge for a large dog to get a bath"? "Fifteen dollars mam" I said. She says to me ok well i am going to come down there and get my fifteen dollars back because yesterday you did my dog and you did dent give it a bath. I reply mam we gave your dog a bath. She argued so I told her to come get her money. I was so mad that instead of just giving her the fifteen dollars, I gave her the twenty dollars that she had gave me the day before. Her dog wasn't even a big dog it was a poodle, any way the reason i am telling this story is to let everyone know that sometimes you will have those difficult customers. Get over it, it happens. Just keep on keeping on.