Tail Talk Grooming Chronicles with Hound Therapy

Grooming Academy Showcase Pt. 1: What It Really Takes to Become a Professional Pet Groomer

• Shannon & Tanya • Episode 22

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How Do I Become A Pet Groomer?

Ever wondered what it really takes to become a professional pet groomer? Shannon and Tanya of Hound Therapy discuss this challenging yet rewarding career path, offering candid insights that go far beyond the "I love dogs" mentality that draws many to the profession.

The stark reality they reveal might surprise you: pet grooming remains completely unregulated, placing the onus of quality education entirely on the individual. While anyone can technically call themselves a groomer without formal training, Shannon and Tanya emphasize that proper education—like their comprehensive year-long academy program—makes all the difference between struggling and thriving in this competitive field.

"This is not for the faint-hearted," Tanya warns, detailing the physical demands of lifting heavy dogs, standing for hours, and handling difficult animals—sometimes getting bitten in the process. The hosts share eye-opening perspectives on client management challenges, including dealing with unrealistic expectations when owners bring in photoshopped images of entirely different breeds. Their most telling insight? "The dogs don't pay you, the people do," highlighting the dual skill set required for success.

Despite these challenges, the hosts remain passionate advocates for the profession, emphasizing its unique rewards and flexibility. They offer practical advice for aspiring groomers: write a business plan, research your local market, observe professionals at work, and most importantly, learn from anyone willing to teach you. Whether you're considering entering the field or simply curious about what your dog's groomer really goes through, this episode provides an honest, unfiltered look at the realities behind the clippers. 

Ready to learn more about pet grooming as a career? Call Hound Therapy Academy at 469-367-0009 or visit their website to schedule a tour and see professional grooming in action.

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?

Speaker 2:

let the dogs out. From clippers to confidence. Becoming a pet groomer takes more than just loving dogs. Shannon and Tanya share what it really takes to enter the grooming profession from training to temperament and everything in between. Welcome back everyone. I'm Sofia Yvette, co-host and producer, back in the studio with Shannon and Tanya, professional groomers at Hound Therapy. How's it going today? Ladies? It's fantastic. Thank you Well. It is so great to have you both back on today. Now let's go ahead and kick off this Academy showcase with the basics. How do you become a pet groomer?

Speaker 3:

Oh, loaded question.

Speaker 3:

So you know we get phone calls every day. We obviously have an Academy here Hound Therapy Academy. Our school is a full, solid year. It's a year of learning. It's what you have to be in cosmetology or barber's licenses in the state of Texas is a 1500 hour course. So we kind of came upon that from that same aspect. But, that said, nothing is required to be a dog groomer. If you want to go out and you want to have confidence, you really need to practice, practice, practice. If you can learn from anybody who will teach you, educate yourself too, Like a hundred percent and and you know, use common sense right.

Speaker 3:

If you can see that, hey, this doesn't look right or feel right, then it's probably not. So learn what not to do is good as well. We don't want to continue. We believe in bringing the best foot forward. I want, I believe in what I do. I love what I do. I love working with the animals, I love educating our owners and I love educating younger groomers or, you know, brand new people in the field that really think that that's going to be a great career. I want them to love it as much as I do, but, more importantly, I want them to take the time, the effort and the money that it takes to invest into anything and initiative and an initiative and anything to make it work.

Speaker 3:

You need to join this and be in this business because you love it, not because it makes millions of dollars, because, in theory, being a great football player, a lot of really good players do not make NFL. And this is that same theory. If you talk to a really good groomer who's been grooming 20, 30, 40 years, somebody who maybe has a specialty that's only been grooming 10 years, they're an expert on the grooming field, but they're not. There are no experts. Everybody is just kind of making up as it goes because there is no.

Speaker 3:

We are unregulated, and I think I've said this on many, many podcasts before I say it to everybody that comes in here, it's on our website we are unregulated, so this is on you to take it upon yourself to put your best foot forward. You want vets to respect you. The only way they're going to respect you is if you bring something to the table. We bring care of dogs first, above all and foremost. We bring an education, so we bring the fact that, hey look, this is what an ear infection may or may or moles, things like that.

Speaker 4:

You have to know like it's good, bad and ugly.

Speaker 3:

You're going to get dirty.

Speaker 4:

You're going to get tired.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, this is not for the faint hearted, it is not for somebody who's feeble, it is not for somebody that does not have a good work ethic. You've got to stick with this. It is backbreaking, thankless job. People that come in, they'll bulldoze you, they will run you down with. I want my dog to look like this, and here's a Photoshop of you know fluffy, and that's not your dog. It's not even the same breed, or is it the same color? There's no, it's. You've got to deal with reality.

Speaker 3:

And if you don't know how to do this job, if you can't hold a dog, handle a dog, control a dog these are all things that we teach you. Our bathing class is three months long. That is just to be able to bathe and dry a dog properly. Focus on the skin, focus on what skin conditions may or may not be there. Focus on animal to animal transmitted diseases, on animal to human transmitted diseases. It's common sense, it's in books, everywhere, but there is no book on how to groom a dog properly from start to finish. We teach that. We teach how to answer the phones, how to talk to clients, how to groom a dog, how to hold a dog, how to do a face, how to do patterns there's so much to learn and how to retain your clients and how to retain it. It is mind boggling how much information in one year. It goes so quickly.

Speaker 3:

And even my one year students they get, they get jobs. They they feel like they could go groom somewhere. But they come in here with the idea of I'm going to go start a business and I'm going to do this and I'm going to, and they leave. They look at me and I say okay, well, you know, you've done your time, You've done your hours, You're doing great. You know, call me if you need me and they're like I don't want to leave, I don't.

Speaker 3:

I'm nervous, I'm scared. You know, even when I I play students in job placements and no-transcript there's no. I don't know what you would say, Sophia, if I said you know what? I took an online class on how to do layering and coloring for your hair. I'm awesome at it. I don't think you're gonna sit down in my chair and be like that sounds awesome. You probably learned it really, really well. You know, I mean, we're not gonna. I took a driver's ed class and I'm a horrible driver. It was all online, so you've got to. This is a hands-on career. You have to be hands-on. Every dog is different, every code is different. The cuts that we do here are not akc. They're not in books. You just have to know that groomers.

Speaker 3:

Yes, the only way to know it is to do it, and you've got to do it with somebody who's willing to teach you, somebody who's been around a while that's willing to teach you the tricks, the ins and outs.

Speaker 4:

Make sure that person's got good reviews and you'll learn a lot and you want to take the good parts and you want to leave the bad parts of. I mean, you'll get a lot of information and the stuff that you don't agree with or that you don't like. You know you don't have to do that in your career, but you do need to learn and know what you want to do and what you want to bring to this industry and what how you want your career to be, whether that's just a basic pet groomer, whether that's a show groomer, creative groomer I mean the list goes on.

Speaker 3:

really, yeah, Medical yeah, there's nothing that you can't do, and I would say that this career choice, this path, leads you in many directions. So you, you might have one idea, even though it's animal related, and you're like I want to be a this, you get into it. You're like, oh, I, maybe, I want to do this. But if this, all of this, everything that we learn in here, everything that we teach in here, and we're learning as we go as well, I've I learn every day new things. You're going to, you're going to figure out where your place is in here and where your personality fits, and you know where your strengths and weaknesses are and what you like to do, because dogs are attached to people, so you've got to be able to relate to the people that are in those and you've got to be able to make a living, and those are all very tricky things to do. If you're just signing up for, hey, I love dogs. I used to work corporate for, you know, 40 years and now I'm going to be a dog groomer. Well, that's unrealistic.

Speaker 4:

My thing, my thing is the dogs don't pay you, the people do. Yeah, you got it. The people are paying your bills, not the dogs. I mean, the dogs, inadvertently, are paying your bills, but they're not the one that pays their grooming bill. I wish that were the case. You've got to learn.

Speaker 3:

You got to learn how to retain those clients, and the best way to do that is to do a better job than everybody else. Right Proof is in the pudding. There's so, so much to learn that if you can't continuously learn and be able to pivot, move and switch to your strengths and your weaknesses, you're just not going to make it. If you're not doing this because, hey, you know, I don't mind smelly, I don't mind that I just stuck my hand in poop, I don't mind that a dog just I don't mind that a dog just bit down on me twice. You know it's, it's. You can't be afraid of that.

Speaker 3:

I have clients that are afraid of their own dogs, and you can't be that person. To be in this industry, you've got to be able to lift 50 to a hundred pounds. You've got to be able to stand on your feet all day long. You've got to be able to commit a good solid eight hours of hard physical work. You've got to know that, hey, when I leave here, I'm covered in hair too. I don't have time to eat, I don't have time to drink, and when I do, it's usually covered in hair.

Speaker 3:

You'll see us grooming dogs at our table, eating a sandwich or whatever we found to eat that day if anything and that's going to be with in any shop for any groomer and any vet tech and anywhere you go but the grooming of a dog, the health and skin all of the things that you learn here are great building blocks for anywhere. I have a lot of people that go into vet tech and they do vet tech and grooming. Grooming doesn't translate. So if you're a good dog groomer, you can pretty much live anywhere in the world and do it, which is kind of cool, awesome, and it's dogs are dogs.

Speaker 3:

I mean, the cuts are the same and, as long as there's not a lot, it's kind of like you know being a barber or a cosmetologist but you don't have to have a license to do it. So you don't have to get recertified. You don't have to take online recertifications. You can just be good at what you do, focus on what works for you, charge, you know an appropriate amount, learn how to talk to clients and you know just kind of practice your trade and that's a unique kind of a business to be in.

Speaker 3:

So the other thing I would say for there for me it's learn from anybody who'll teach you. You can start as a bather, you could start at, you know vet clinics. You can start with a boarding facility. I would prefer any place that's got somebody who's got experienced groomers who are open-minded to teach what they know, and you'll find it's kind of a catty industry. So it's their competitive is probably a better word, and so not everybody's willing to teach what they've learned because they've had to fight for it. The other thing is write a business plan, write it down. Write down what you want to do, put it out there, stick it in the universe.

Speaker 4:

Even if you're working for someone else.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, even if it's my job. My goal is to go to work for a big box store and work there for five years and learn this and get a discount, have insurance and get paid a minimal wage while I'm learning, so that I can go out and do this. It's you know, it's, it's just good goal planning. I could be, hey, I want to buy a van and I want to, you know, grim by myself. There's a thousand different ways you can do it, but write it down and that's your story. It's a, it's a dream, so it doesn't have to be it's. It's forever changing. It's your novel, it's. It can be whatever you want. It's your reality, your reality, you know. You could wake up today and say you know what? I didn't sleep very well today, I'm so tired. Or you can choose to rewrite your story and say you know what I'm doing well right now. Right now, I'm doing really good. We don't have to focus on the bad. We can. We can focus on the good things, and that's what a business plan is for me. It's, it's make believe, it's pretend. So make believe and pretend awesome things and you'll achieve awesome things. And you know we teach that a lot in here as well.

Speaker 3:

Be informed. Be informed what your area does. Be informed. What's in your area? What are they charging? Who is doing what? How many grooming shops do you have? Are you know? Is mobile more prevalent? You know, do you have a lot of apartment complexes? What vets are willing to let you come in and learn the medical side of it there's? Be informed. Go to your grooming expos. They have a lot of those. Go to um and just watch. Just watch. See if a grooming shop will let you come in and watch. They're really awesome to watch. You can go to a big box store and just watch it. Then, when you come here and watch us, at the window, just sit there.

Speaker 2:

So thanks for listening Hopefully we answered some of your questions. Call us here at Hound Therapy Academy and it was great talking about what we do. Yes, and thanks for giving us a peek behind the grooming curtain today. This was such a helpful start into the Academy showcase. We'll see you next time on Tail Talk. Grooming Chronicles.

Speaker 1:

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 469-367-000 nine to schedule an appointment, or visit us online at wwwhoundtherapycom. Serving north texas with expert pet care. Until next time, keep those tails wagging.