Imagine you are at work. The Golden Retriever waiting to be finished is barking—a lot. You can hear it over the high-velocity dryer you use on a terrier mix. The radio is on. Someone is vacuuming a pile of fur from the husky that had just been groomed. A vent fan is humming along from the ceiling. Grooming can be loud. Not only individual sounds but sounds that layer one upon the other, so you don't even notice the noise level. That is, until the end of the day when the last machine is turned off and ahhhh… it's so blissfully quiet.
These tools can be confusing. When you read their descriptions in catalogs, they’re so similar…They do the same thing, don’t they? No, they don’t. Let me explain. Both remove undercoat on thick coated dogs. It’s the METHOD of removal that varies. One pulls out dead and shedding coat without cutting the fur. The other has sharp, curved teeth which remove the undercoat but will also cut the coat. One is used primarily on dry coats, both before and after the bath. The other is effective prior to shampooing, during the bathing process, and after the dog is clean and dried.
Most groomers try their hardest to make every dog they work on look the best it possibly can. But sometimes, we must be happy with a groom that is merely "good enough." Here are some examples of these times.
Grooming customers are familiar with dogs undergoing a heavy shed of their winter fur in the spring, but some are surprised when pets also shed their coats in the fall. The shortening days trigger dogs to let their summer coat go to make room for heavier winter coats to grow in. If you have some appointment space to spare this fall, market a seasonal shedding treatment to your customers to help fill those time slots.
