Tail Talk Grooming Chronicles with Hound Therapy

Hound Therapy: Building a Family Legacy in Pet Grooming

• Shannon & Tanya • Episode 21

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How Did Hound Therapy Evolve?

From cutting her dog's hair with household scissors at age 15 to building North Texas's premier pet grooming destination, Shannon's journey epitomizes passion and perseverance against remarkable odds. Her story unfolds like chapters in a well-loved book—apprenticing for free as a teenager, purchasing her mentor's business at 18, pivoting to barbering for fifteen years, then returning to her grooming roots during the pandemic's darkest days.

When COVID forced Shannon's barbershop to close while pet businesses remained essential, she recognized an opportunity disguised as catastrophe. Amid divorce, relocation, and adopting a new puppy, she secured an SBA loan and launched Hound Therapy—despite skepticism about opening a grooming business in a challenging economic climate. What began as a solo venture naturally evolved into a family enterprise when Shannon's daughter-in-law Tanya, who had independently developed grooming skills under a retired poodle show professional, joined the team.

Today, Hound Therapy has expanded beyond services to education, offering a comprehensive 1,500-hour grooming academy that stands in stark contrast to typical brief training programs. Shannon and Tanya provide students with the support system they never had—helping them relocate, find employment through industry connections, prepare resumes, and navigate career transitions. Their "humanity over vanity" philosophy permeates everything from client interactions to teaching methodologies, creating an authentic, hands-on experience in an increasingly digital world. Have you considered how your own passion might transform into a multi-generational legacy? Visit Houndtherapy.com to discover what makes this family-owned pet care center so special, or call 469-367-0009 to experience their exceptional service firsthand.

To learn more about Hound Therapy visit:
https://www.HoundTherapy.com
Hound Therapy
3509 E Park Blvd.
Plano, TX
469-367-0009

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Tail Talk Grooming Chronicles with Hound Therapy, the podcast where we talk all things pet grooming, daycare academy and more. Hosted by Shannon and Tanya of Hound Therapy serving pet owners across North Texas, we're here to share expert tips, hilarious pet stories and the inside scoop on keeping your furry friends happy and healthy. Our motto humanity over vanity. And don't worry, we don't bite. Let's get started. Who let the dogs out? Who let the dogs out.

Speaker 2:

From humble beginnings to full-service grooming, daycare and academy hub, hound Therapy's journey is one of passion, grit and a whole lot of fur. Shannon and Tanya share the origin story behind their mission of humanity over vanity and how it continues to shape every snip and tail wag. Welcome back everyone. I'm Sophia Ayiveth, co--host and producer, back in the studio today with Shannon and Tanya, professional groomers at Hound Therapy. Shannon and Tanya, how are you both today? We're amazing, Amazing. Well, I've honestly been looking forward to this one. Today we're learning how Hound Therapy came to life and grew into the heart of North Texas Pet Care. Let's get a story time from you both. Tell us how Hound Therapy evolved.

Speaker 3:

I'm going to start, since I'm the older one and started way before, so welcome, hello. Everybody here has heard this story multiple times and they continue to as we get new people in and out. So I started out when I was 15 years old, loving animals, as a lot of people do, and I decided that I wanted to groom my dog. I didn't really know much about dog grooming at the time, so I just put my dog up on the counter and I took my home scissors and I was like I'm going to do what I can do. And it was peaches and I did an okay job. I then kind of moved out later on towards getting a job, moving out where am I going to work? And I ended up with a lady named Claudia who owned a grooming salon and said that she would teach me to work if I worked for one year for free for her. And I was like, okay, you know, almost 16 years old, and I thought well, what's a year?

Speaker 3:

It's just a year. I've got nothing else to do and so that's what I did. She showed dogs, so I kind of was thrown into the show world there. Um, we'll speed up to the. I ended up buying her business. I did work the full, solid 365 days for Claudia and she made sure that. You know I I worked um by six months in felt I could run her business. You know I knew everything and here I am, 40 plus years. I still learning um multiple things on. You know how we've gotten from there to here.

Speaker 3:

I took a little hiatus and became a barber, got a barber's license, I stopped dog grooming and I did men's haircuts solely with straight razor shaves, and I did that for 15 years. I ran that business and it was very rewarding for a long period of time. But it clearly became, as I got older, very clear that it was not going to sustain me, you know, physically just being able to stand there all day and be able to like there's no other me. I'm one person and as I get older and stop cutting hair, it's not like they're just going to mail me money in the, in the, in the you know slow mail. Hey, we feel bad for you. Here's our haircut money. So I decided in the middle of COVID to open up and go back to what I knew best, which was dog grooming. I do hair very well always have and I love what I do.

Speaker 3:

Opening in the middle of COVID was eye-opening. My barbershop was shut down by the government and dog grooming shops and boarding facilities were not, and it was just absolutely amazing to me that they could take my independent business and say look, you can't go into work, you can't earn money, and they didn't send me a check, I didn't get a bonus or I was a self-employed. It was difficult. It also, just so happens, I was in the middle of a divorce through all of this and so I got divorced, moved out of my house, got a new home, I got a dog Whiskey Time who's a beach slut, and she was seven months, seven weeks old when I opened my shop in here, went through construction, got an SBA loan, just so many things that were against me, and I didn't have a groomer.

Speaker 3:

I'm like I was turned down from anybody who wanted to open a shop for me, because dog grooming is associated with boarding and associated with fleas and poop and smells. We're very clean in here, we don't have a problem. But I also didn't have a concept, so everything was against me. Just from the here. I am uneducated, 15 year old, trained by some other groomer. You know who did everything wrong in my first business. Cause what did I know? I was 16. I was 18 when I bought my first business and you were 18 and knew everything and I knew everything.

Speaker 3:

So it was. It was a transition for sure. Then I very quickly learned how hard it is to, you know, have an employee, not just to work myself, but how do I have an employee to, how do I have an employee who's specifically trained to do exactly what I do, that has the same passion, that believes that, hey look, hard work is how to progress in life. And being bitten and getting peed on it's not for everybody and we are unregulated, so it's not like I can pull from a student where I'm not well-trained with social media. I wasn't any of these things with social media. I wasn't any of these things. It was just a hurdle restarting over again in my late forties. So it was hard. I turned 15 in my first year of opening here and it was difficult.

Speaker 3:

Tanya came in, my son who was laid off of work. It really quickly turned into a family business. I never, ever would have looked at you seven years ago and said I am going to have a family of dog groomers and this is what my life is going to be in my old, never in a hundred years would I have said that Um, and that's exactly what we are. This is Tanya's my daughter-in-law. She's married to my oldest son. She moved away when I first opened this business and wanted to get into grooming also, like me, started, I think in the same fashion.

Speaker 3:

I was um, also worked for a retired poodle show groomer and kind of learned the ropes through that. I was actually offered her business. I didn't take it. I came back here but I started out. I originally started out in nutrition and then it just went from there. She you worked with animals decided she you liked it, wanted to continue to do it and kind of faked it till you make it like a lot of groomers do at a grooming facility. Luckily we're close.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and you know, and I told her she would call and say how do I do this? I told her I knew how. Or she started literally with my old grooming equipment that was retired.

Speaker 2:

I still have your first scissors.

Speaker 3:

So it was nice to have it full circle. And now we are putting that into an academy where we're training new young minds that are kind of like where we were, you know, 40 years ago, 10 years ago, and they're on their their journey of how do I get started into this awesome world Like we were, but better, yeah, they have support.

Speaker 3:

They do, and our school is a year long. Here we take a full, solid 13 to 14 months because we have some break, but it is a 1500 hour course on how to groom, how to fix your clippers, maintain good clientele. You know basic business. It's a lot crammed into one year but compared to the three month and eight week classes that people are offered, it's been hard. But we have a family.

Speaker 3:

People come from all over the world here and they drop their young children off or we feel responsible. We help them find jobs. We work very closely with a lot of other grooming shops and vet clinics so we can help them transition into work. We help them with resumes. We have people who have left corporate, who have come in here. They're just tired of corporate and we do a lot of consulting for corporate businesses that are transitioning into adding grooming because, yes, it can be lucrative. We don't do this for the money, we do it because we love it.

Speaker 3:

I love hair, I'm good with hair, I love animals, I don't mind being bitten and I feel like what we do really matters and I've always believed that doing the best that you can has served me well, staying true to who you are and we try to keep that alive and hopefully for many years to come, keeping that, you know, that type of a mentality in what is a lazy work from home. I'm only dressed from the top up. There's a lot of differences in what we do. It's hands-on, it's not going to be replaced by AI. You have to learn it. You've got to be able to talk to people. You've got to be able to have a one-on-one and it's. It's a lot to learn. So we love what we do.

Speaker 3:

It was a struggle to get here and we're still we're still learning every day but we, we try to improve every day on what we already know and that's, I think, kind of our goal. So we do appreciate all of our beautiful clients, our lovely dogs, and you know everybody who sticks and stays with us and you know the banks who loaned us the money when we didn't have credit and all of that stuff. It was hard, it was very difficult.

Speaker 2:

Wow, thank you so much for sharing about your journey with us today. It sounds like you certainly have come a long way, but you've kept the heart of the business throughout the entire process, leaving a legacy for your family and with pets forever. That's the goal. Well, shannon and Tanya, it's been a pleasure again having you on and we will catch you on your next episode. Have a fantastic rest, thank you next episode.

Speaker 1:

Have a fantastic rest of your day. That's a wrap for this episode of Tail Talk with Hound Therapy. Ready to book your pet's next groom daycare stay or grooming academy tour? Call us at 469-367-0009. That's 469-367-0009. To schedule an appointment, or visit us online at wwwhoundtherapycom. Serving North Texas with expert pet care. Until next time, keep those tails wagging.