Yesterday we took our puppy to the groomers for the first time. It was an interesting experience for all of us.
Since our pup is a Labrador Retriever with short hair she probably doesn’t really need to go to the groomers all that badly. I mean, labs tend to love water, and the one time I gave her a bath and a few times when I rinsed her off in the tub (not a bath just a clean up) she was fine. Actually she really enjoyed the water and tried to drink right from the shower nozzle when it was pointed at her.
I even did her nails myself about two weeks ago with no real problems. I’ll admit some of the edges were a little rough and I got a few scratches later when I was playing with her, but I managed to cut her nails without hurting or traumatizing her.
Of course I’ve had a lot of practice cutting nails on small animals … well .. reptiles. LOL I used to cut my Chinese Water Dragons and Iguana’s nails! Now that was an interesting experience. They got used to get their nails cut though and they’d just sit on my leg or lie in my lap as I picked up one of their feet and cut and then filed their nails. So you gotta figure cutting a dogs nails would be easy huh?
If your curious you can read about how to cut lizard nails at my water dragon website. Actually the info is very similar to what you’d do when cutting a dog or cats nails so if you don’t know how to cut your pets nails it might help.
Anyway … since we’ve been taking our puppy to puppy training classes at Petsmart they give out a coupon at the end of each class. One of the coupons was for $4 off the Puppy Grooming Package. I believe the current full price is supposed to $17.99, but we somehow managed to get a real deal!
We brought Midnight into the groomers at 3 pm and left her with the groomers. We’ve left her alone at home, but we’ve never left her at someones house let alone in the hands of strangers before so we had no idea how she’d react. We dropped her off and left the store as I was sure I’d be peeking in the grooming section window and probably upsetting Midnight even more by watching.
We left the store to go grocery shopping while she had a shampoo, massage and blow dry, hand brushing and loose hair removal, nail trimming, and an ear cleaning/plucking. Once she was done they gave her a red bandanna. She looked so cute!
The groomer said that she was the most well behaved puppy that he’d ever groomed.
Proud mom moment here.
We thought he was just saying that but he went on to describe how she behaved when he washed her and blow dried her and we eventually believed he was telling us the truth. He thought that the blow dryer would have scared her but she apparently liked it. He said she was trying to lick the blow dryer or something to that effect.
The only time he had a bit of a problem was when he was cutting her nails as she wasn’t settling down. He said he must have cut to close on one of her nails and I guess it hurt a bit so she stood still after that.
She didn’t stay still when I was cutting her nails either, but none of my nail cuts hurt her.
Maybe it was just because she was being handled by a stranger that made her be so good for the groomer.
She smells really nice now. Not that she smelled bad before or anything, but she was getting a bit of a doggy smell to her and I had been thinking of giving her a bath.
So you know what it ended up costing us? $4.99! Now that was a deal! I think they must have either typed in the grooming package wrong or gave us a bigger discount on the coupon. Chris paid the bill and I didn’t realize how little we’d paid until we’d left the store.
We’ll probably still do most of her grooming, bathing and nails here at home, but if I can get a deal every now and then we’ll definitely take her to the groomers again.
I don’t know if all the excitement of being in Petsmart and hanging out with groomers for an hour and a half tired her out or what, but she was sleepy all evening. I just hope that she doesn’t decide to stay awake all night now!
I bet Midnight really enjoyed the whole process, all that one on one attention! We’ve taken our puppy to the groomer one time. My daughter has been bathing her in our shower stall and the dog loves it. The only problem I have is with trimming her nails. The first time I did it, it went very smoothly. The second time though I clipped one too close and now she won’t let me get near her with the trimmer. I’m not sure what to do.