Welcome to my world (part 2)
or the intimate confessions of an ex-dog groom(er).

The saga continues:

After staying away from dogs and grooming for approximately 8 years, I found myself going back into the trenches again. However, this time it was more necessity, rather than free choice. You see, a dump truck had taken exception to my 280Z and simply reconfigured it into a 140Z. The damage to my body nearly equaled the damage to the car, and I was unable to continue in my business. After spending a year and a half in daily physical therapy, I decided that the best thing I could possibly do was to simply go fishing, and that’s exactly what I did. For nearly a year that was all I did (okay, I ate, I slept, and I did some other things too), and I got pretty good at it. The fishing was good, but after a while the realization that all I was doing was running away and hiding became quite evident. At that time I had no idea or inkling of an idea as to what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew it was time to do something. No, going back into dogs was not my first choice, and probably not even my fifty-fifth choice, but it still became a choice, The Choice. Actually it was the only choice after I eliminated all the other choices. Or you might say all the other choices had eliminated me. Either way I was hooked (no pun intended) again.

The first job I found was at a boarding kennel that needed an experienced groomer. Fortunately it was dogs only, because I am very allergic to cats. Anyway, I was able to work myself back into doing high quality grooming in a relatively short period of time. Guess the saying about riding a bicycle is really true. The workers in the kennel were really great to work with, and they must have felt that I was wasting time there for they were (without my knowledge) out there looking for jobs for me. They had been telling me that I was too good to be working there, but I thought that they were just trying to flatter me. I sure was wrong about that, they meant it. They actually started sending me out on interviews. On my second interview, which I went to on my lunch break, I found my next grooming job. The shop was a few miles from the kennel. When I went in and met the owner, we spoke about the what and where of my work experience. She had an apricot Miniature Poodle on one of the grooming tables, and was in the process of finishing the dog. Since she wanted to see what I could do, I simply took over and finished the dog. She hired me right then. Little did she know just what she was getting herself into. After giving two weeks notice, I started my new job.

Now I could have fun again, and I definitely did. Being more than slightly irreverent with a touch of the mischief, I began to slowly make this shop into a fun place, while putting out really good work. You can do both, as long as you really enjoy what you’re doing. I also began to instill all of the innovative ideas that I had either picked up or created myself, into the shops daily routine.

The first thing I changed was how the dogs were being bathed. They had been lathering the dog only once with the shampoo, then rinsing, and to them the dog was clean. Hmm. I asked them how they washed their own hair. They both said that they lathered their hair, then rinsed, and then lathered again. After they rinsed the second time they used a conditioner. I asked them, "What would happen if you did that to the dogs?". Without really waiting for any answer, I put the next dog in the tub and bathed it that way. Lathering twice, and rinsing twice. From then on all the dogs were lathered twice. From what I was able to gather some years before, and this came from a few top hair salon stylists, was that the first lathering only loosens the dirt and scurf, while the second lathering cleans completely. When I first heard this, it made sense, and I have found that when things make sense, they work. So that became the routine for bathing the dogs. I was on a roll, and ready for the next change of their methods. The types of shampoos that they were using.

There are many shampoos on the market both for humans as well as for pets. Does anyone really look at the ingredients? If you do, do you know what they are? If you read the label, the first ingredient is water, and the next ingredient is either sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate. Well I know what water is, but what the heck is this sodium stuff? Well I found out that it is the "sudsing agent", it’s the stuff that makes the bubbles. There is only one shampoo that I know of that does not have the sudsing agent in it, and that is Redkin. In my first kennel we started to use Redkin, which by the comes in a concentrate form as well as the ready to use. We were using the concentrate form, which once diluted to the gallon should have bathed around sixteen dogs. My partner and I were not paying attention to the amount of shampoo we were going through until we found out that we had gone through two months of concentrate in about one week! We both asked the bather if she had misplaced the shampoo. "No". "Well where is it". "I used it up". My partner and I just looked at each other and knew that this wasn’t even remotely possible. We asked the bather to show us how she mixed it, which she did. So far so good. Then we asked her to bath some dogs while we watched, which she started to. We then asked why she was using so much shampoo on the dog. "I’m trying to get it to suds up". We are all under the assumption that if you see suds, you’re cleaning. In the words of George Gershwin, in his opera Porgy and Bess, "It ain’t necessarily so!". Needless to say, we never used any sudless shampoo in the kennel again. Not that it wasn’t doing the job, for it definitely was, but we felt that it would take too long to retrain our bather into understanding that the suds weren’t necessary.

Now getting back to the shop, and the shampoos they were using. Shampoo as we understand it is a form of soap, but detergent is a chemical cleansing agent similar to soap. They both do the same thing, they clean. If you want to see a great example of using the wrong type of "shampoo" on something other than our pet or ourselves, try washing your car with dish detergent (have your car wash handy if you do this, but I DON’T recommend your doing it at all) and watch it eat into the finish on the car. I did it, and ruined the paint on my car. An expensive lessen, but I learned something. No, it wasn’t just don’t wash the car in dish detergent, it was there is a big difference in shampoos, and products that call themselves shampoo.

So rather abruptly, I had the brand and types of shampoos in the shop changed to what I knew would give optimum results. And that is exactly what we got. At the same time I was always experimenting with other shampoos to see if we could improve on what we were using. There were some changes made as we found products that did work better, and finally had a chemist make some shampoos for us to our unique specifications. Whatever works, works. However, with breeding and showing Shih Tzu’s and Yorkies, we wanted to go from better to, if possible, best.

Now that the shampoos and conditioners were in place, all that was left was to use them properly. I showed the bather that for every minute that the shampoo or conditioner is on the dog, she had to rinse for two minutes. Working with some Veterinarians we found that it was very easy to clog the sebaceous gland pores if complete rinsing was not done. Any residue that was left on the skin could do this very readily (then the next stop, the vet). Then it was explained to her that hair can become tolerant to a shampoo, so if she bathed a dog once a week the shampoo had to be changed to a different shampoo, once every 4 to 6 weeks. In other words she could use one brand of shampoo for up to 6 weeks in a row, but the 7th week she should use a different shampoo. Then on the 8th week go back to the normally used shampoo. This way the hair gets a rest from the regularly used shampoo. Remember, "If it makes sense, do it, and if it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it!". By the way, in closing, if the dog is dirty, give the dog a bath! If they get dirty every day, bathe them. Remember to rinse well, that’s the secret. I have had Vets tell me that a dog should only be bathed once a month. I asked them if they did that to themselves what would happen to their social life?

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