grooming appointments

Fall Dog Grooming

Proper grooming is important year round. Grooming keeps your pet looking and feeling its best. It also improves their comfort through changing seasons. Fall grooming is extremely important to the overall health and comfort of your pet.

Heat and humidity levels change throaughout the fall. Once the weather cools, your pet’s coat will begin to grow. This additional growth can hide skin and coat problems such as matting, tumors and sores. Pet grooming in the fall is a critical part of preparing for winter.

Breed Specific Dog Grooming

There are six different types of coat. Our experienced pet groomers know how to work with each type.

Smooth Coats – Dogs with smooth coats such as Greyhounds and Dachshunds have a short, single layer coat that lies close to their body. These coats require regular brushing to maintain their healthy appearance. In addition to regular grooming, dogs with smooth coats should be brushed weekly to remove dead skin and loose hair.

Double Coats – Double coated breeds such as Huskies and Malamutes require extra care as the weather changes. These breeds can become easily matted as their thick undercoat grows in. In between regular grooming sessions, it’s important to ensure that dogs with double coats remain clean and tangle free. In order to properly brush a double coat, separate the layers and thoroughly brush or comb each one.

Wire Coats – Wire coated breeds include Airedales and Irish Wolfhounds. These breeds have a soft, short undercoat and a coarse outer layer. Regular professional grooming is necessary to keep wire coats well maintained.

Curly Coats – Breeds such as Poodles and Bishon Frises have thick, soft curls that sit close to their bodies. Regular grooming and brushing in the fall keeps curly coats manageable and helps to prevent tangles from forming.

Long Coats – Long coated breeds such as Yorkies and Shih Tzu’s have fine hair that is prone to tangles. Professional grooming is required to keep these breeds looking and feeling their best.

Hairless Coats – Hairless breeds such as the Chinese Crested require little to no brushing. However, they do require regular grooming. These breeds often have extremely sensitive skin.

Claws N Paws Day Spa offers a variety of pet grooming services in Orange County, California. Please call 714-962-1005 to schedule a grooming appointment.

Top Ten Situations That Groomers Face Every Day

Despite what most people believe, pet grooming isn’t just playing with pets and giving them a haircut while they stand perfectly still. There are actually a lot of problems that can occur with grooming, caused by both the pets and their people. Believe it or not, most pets don’t enjoy having to stand still, having their nails trimmed, their ear hair plucked and having noisy clippers dragged all over their body.

Grooming a pet is very different than cutting a human’s hair. While people are able to sit still and actually enjoy the process of having their hair cared for, pets often soil themselves, wiggle constantly and sometimes even bite their groomer.

Let’s take a closer look at the top ten situations pet groomers face every day:

Groomers leave work looking like they’ve been in a fight
One of the many ways that pets show their displeasure is by flailing about. This can happen while they are being groomed, bathed or simply when they are picked up. As they flail about, their claws dig into their groomer’s flesh, leaving them looking like they’ve been fighting with a thorn bush all day long.
Groomers must deal with persistent customers
Many pet parents believe that persistence will pay off when trying to get a grooming appointment. These customers often try to get a same day appointment and refuse to give up, even when the groomer is booked solid for weeks.
Groomers are often paranoid about the way they smell
Groomers spend their entire workday surrounded by a variety of smells including wet dog, urine, feces and bleach. This makes it virtually impossible to leave work smelling like a bed of roses.
Groomers must read between the lines
Pet parents are often vague about how they want their pet groomed. Sometimes they ask for “short” when they only want a light trim, or they tell the groomer to do “whatever they think will look good.” This often leads to problems when their pet doesn’t look exactly how they think it should after their grooming appointment.
Appointment times are often ignored
When a customer is given an appointment time it is generally understood that they should arrive at the correct time. However, many customers feel that appointment times are more like “guidelines” and arriving within a couple of hours of their appointed time is fine.
Groomer’s lung is real
Thousands of tiny hairs blasting everywhere combined with the dander and dirt that comes off of pets and the perfumes in shampoos and sprays can cause significant damage to a groomer’s lungs.
A pet groomer’s hands suffer the most
A pet groomer’s hands are constantly wet from giving baths, they get fried by the dryers, chaffed from the scissors, receive friction burns from the clippers and are constantly getting bit and scratched by pets.
Anal glands
While many grooming shops empty a dog’s anal glands as part of the service, most of the time they will empty their gland’s themselves, often all over their groomer.
Pet parents often use misleading words when describing vicious pets
Just because you call your pet “strong willed” or “a bit snappy” it won’t make it hurt any less when they bite your groomer’s finger off.
Matting and knots
It’s not unusual for a pet parent to bring in an animal that is more knot than pet and claim that they don’t want it shaved. Unfortunately, the groomer must then explain that not shaving a pet in this condition would be inhumane.

Claws N Paws Day Spa offers quality dog and cat grooming in Orange County, California. For more information, or to schedule a grooming appointment, please call 714-962-1005.

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