Speaker 1: This is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, Welcome back to another episode of Groomer Humor.
As always, we are your hosts. I'm Ruby V along
with Anthony Ray. First and foremost, we want to thank
our producer, Mark Winter and Pet Life Radio for giving
us the opportunity, and as always, we want to thank
you guys for tuning in. Guys, in this episode, we're
going to be talking a little bit about the challenges
of staying in this very difficult career of dog grooming
and how we could possibly support one another to make
that challenge a little easier. We got that coming up
in this episode of Groomer Humor.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Groomer. You were once again. We are
your hosts on Woody along with Anthony Ray. Guys, it
is just so nice to talk to you guys at
once again about dog grooming. What a great topic.
Speaker 1: We do bounce around a lot, we do, we do,
I mean, but dog grooming is always the heart and soul,
even if we're talking about taco bell or you know,
all right, right, numerous things we discussed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by this time you guys definitely have gotten to
know us on a completely different level, you know. I mean,
you know, if you guys didn't notice that when we
did the Amy Lee live stream, I shaved I gave
Anthony a sanitary clip.
Speaker 1: So I forgot to check that out.
Speaker 2: To go to go groom or go to Amy Lee
live stream with us on there and you can see
me giving Anthony a sanitary clip.
Speaker 1: I totally forgot I did that. Oh my god, you
knocked over the camera, dude, that was Yeah, you guys
should go check that out. I must have. I must
have suppressed that memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so did I.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was people watching and I'm acting like such
a buffoon.
Speaker 2: It was fun though, thank you.
Speaker 1: It was fun. Yeah. We love you Amy.
Speaker 2: We love you Amy. But like we mentioned in the intro, guys,
the challenge of staying in this business is incredibly difficult.
And tell you a little bit about me as if
you don't know about me already. But I've been doing
this a very long time. I started dog rooming in
nineteen eighty five, so I'm in about close to thirty
eight years, and I have seen so many ups and
downs in this business, both personally professionally and I can
tell you right now, it probably one of the most
difficult occupations that you can ever get into. And I
often wonder why we get into it at all.
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of groomers get into
this business with a very high misunderstanding of what actually
goes into it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's always the misconceptions of just dog grooming is cute, yeah,
and like it's it's you get to play with dogs
all day.
Speaker 2: Right right, Well yeah, check out some of our videos,
check out some other groomer YouTube videos and see how
difficult it is. We in our YouTube channel don't always
convey the difficulty of dog grooming because we're more of
like a DIY channel, But there are other very popular
grooming channels out there that show a little bit more
truth of the stress of what they're feeling as they're
trying to groom dogs. We show a little bit of it,
but like I said, we tend to like try to
teach people how to groom on our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: We try to mix in once in a while, like
a shaky dog or you know, a nervous dog. I
think the only like a dog that was like actively
like trying to bite was the Westy getting the bath,
but that dog was more trying to bite the water, yeah,
than it wasn't really trying to bite you. But yeah,
like you said, like we're DIY, So it's like, we're
not really going to teach you guys a whole lot
if we're trying to deal with a dog that's trying
to jump off the table. I mean, unless that's the
specific problem that you have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not to say that we won't show that
in the future. But like I said, I've been doing
this for so long, guys, and there's nothing I haven't done.
I've gone through all of that stressful stuff. I've done
it ten times over. And when you start to reach
that thirty forty year mark of doing dog rooming, you
tend to try to alleviate yourself from the more difficult jobs,
the bigger jobs, the aggressive dog jobs. And again it's
part of what I want to talk about here is
that's what will keep you in this career because yeah,
when I started this out, I was nineteen years old
when dog grooming school and everything was great, I was
all gung home. I'm like wow, you know, and at
the time, I think we were getting like twenty five
thirty bucks for a small dog rooming a sheetsu poodle,
and it was like, wow, I can make twenty five
dollars and you know an hour and a half. It
was good money back in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not so much now.
Speaker 2: Not so much now. But the point is that it's
such a challenge because it's hard to make that money
and it's hard to stay in it. Once I reached
even like the two or three year mark, I suffered
from groom or burnout. And you guys know what that is.
It's when you just question your occupation, whether you want
to do it anymore. You get bitten up a couple
of times. You know, you have unruly customers that come
in and they just their demands are so high, and
you know you're trying to please them, and you know,
dogs are jumping off the table while you're trying to
groom them, and it becomes an extremely stressful environment. So
what keeps us in the game? Right after a while,
you start saying, hey, man, and you know, I can
get another job. I can go to FedEx, I can
go to ups and make even more money and not
have to deal with this crap. Right, But what keeps
us in the game. I guess love of dogs, if
I had to sum it up. We love dogs and
love being around them. It's weird. But as dog rumers,
we have to separate that love and that cuddly feeling
that we get with our pets and actually do the work.
We actually have to give them a haircut, and that's
where the challenge comes in. The problem comes in, The
stress comes in trying to clip a dog's nails who
was just trying to take your frigging hand off. Your
heart is jumping out of your skin. So I don't
know how much longer I can do this, Anthony. I'll
be honest with you all kidding aside, I think I've
been spent five years ago already.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, you have a hernia collection that you've
been building over the years, and it's probably worth a
lot of money at this point because you know you
never opened it, right, it's mint on card they call it. Yeah,
you know, mint on belly button. Yeah, you know. I
think that a lot of groomers feel stuck because it's
so hard to learn and master, I guess, and so
few people actually do master it. And that's I feel like,
you know, when groomers have that realization of especially nowadays,
I could make as much money flipping burgers at McDonald's
with zero percent of the responsibility that carries over from
dog rooming and get steady pay and not have to
really deal with trying to not get bit in the face.
When they have that realization, I think they feel stuck
because it's like, but I just went through five years
of hell and stress trying to get good at this,
and I'm finally like, I'm there. But now now you're
doing eight dogs a day because you are there, and
you because you've been grooming for ten years and you
could have groom a full day. But with that comes
the full stress of being a groomer. And then that's
when people want to stop. It's almost like that's what's
so weird about dog rooming. You want to stop when
you reach the pinnacle of no, you made it, you're good,
you have some experience. Now you can do it, And
so true you're stuck though, because you don't really want
to do it. You do, but once it occurs to
you that there are so many easier things that you
can do. Yeah, And I feel like that's when it
happens it's like.
Speaker 2: Being in a bad relationship, you know what I mean.
You become so used to it. I guess, to quote
Natalie Wood, it's better to stay with the devil, you know,
than to seek something else. You get so far into it,
and like you just said, you become good at it,
and you invest so much energy and time and money
into it that backing out of it is almost like, well,
I'm not backing out now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And now you're stuck.
Speaker 2: Then now you're stuck. And not to say that there's
not the love of doing this because again, like bathing dogs.
We just did a video with Boguey and cleaning a bogie.
It's a re warning job, but it's so damn stressful
I can't even I have seen groomers collapse. No, lie, guys,
I've been doing this for so long. I worked in
various different situations, different people. I worked for a friend
of mine and his shop was very, very busy, and
I've literally seen dog groomers collapse at their table. I
saw someone get bit in the face by a Cocker
spaniel so severely that the dog she was clipping the
dog's nails. The dog came at her face, bit down,
grabbed her under her lip and her nose, and her
reaction was to pull away, and the dog just pulled
right through her face. Her lip was out, her nose
was open. So you think this is a joke. People
think this is cute. It's not cute. It is frigging
dangerous at times, not all the time, but something like
that will make you bounce very very quickly. She bounced immediately.
Had to get plastic surgery on our face and everything,
and it was a shame. But we're dealing with dogs.
You're dealing with unpredictable situations at times. So again, what
keeps us in? I've been severely bitten. I got severely
bitten by a golden retriever. I didn't want to go
to work. I didn't want to go back. I just
didn't even want to go back. Even the smell of
walking into the shop I was working at. Just I
was terrified because I got bitten up so badly. So
what keeps us in? What keeps us in? I think
part of it is we don't talk enough about it.
You know, there are certain occupations that are a lot
more stressful than others. For example, you know, being a
cop in Manhattan, you know, their suicide rate is so
high because their job is so stressful, and it's just
not a good job to get into because their job
is so stressful. A Dentists have a stressful job, Veterinarians
have a stressful job, and so dodos.
Speaker 1: Well, it's certain careers are really only made for certain people.
You have to have strong stomachs and you know, be
able to deal with high stress, high anxiety situations, and
not everybody can do that. I'm actually, to be honest
with all of you, I'm shocked that we've even made
it this far as dog groomers because me and you
run real nervous.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I run very nervous.
Speaker 1: I'm a nervous guy, yep.
Speaker 2: And that's part of the challenge too, is keeping yourself,
you know, common enough to do this job so that
the dog's not picking up on your nervousness all of that.
But I was watching recently a fellow dog rooming YouTube channel,
very popular channel. I'm not going to mention their name,
but they were doing this really really big job, a
completely matted I don't know what kind of dog it was,
but it was like a big, almost a giant, double
coated breed matted. The owner was giving her a hard time. Oh,
I didn't want the dog shaved and all this, so
she agrees to not shave the dog, which makes the
job even ten times harder. She's clipping out the mats
and raking it out, blow drying. She just spent like
four or five hours on it. And then one of
the comments was somebody left this rude comment. It said,
stop complaining about your job. If you don't like your job,
then just quit, shut up, and do your job. I
was a hairdresser for ten years. Okay, that's something that
has to stop. Stop comparing hair dressing, and not to
say that you guys don't work hard, you do, but
stop comparing it to dog grooming.
Speaker 1: Okay, because nothing's totally different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the stresses of it are completely different. Because
when was the last time you went to the hairdresser
and they cleaned your ears out with a cotton ball?
You know? Or you know what I'm saying, or you know,
or you know you sat down and the person whose
hair you're cutting starts biting at your scissors. You know
what I'm saying. You know, when was the last time
you were a hairdresser and you took one of your
clients and put them in the tub and did their
anal glands.
Speaker 1: You know, sign me up. If you are doing that,
probably use some extra work, right, yeah, right, if you're
a nick like yeah, if your hairdressers does an I
got to ask my barber what kind of specials he has,
what sort of you know, you know they break it
down sometimes yeah, yeah, packages. I got to see what
kind of packages just exactly. Maybe hairdressers are doing this
the whole time and we had no idea. Yeah, that
would be the only thing that would make that statement
you just read make any sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah what ween though? Yeah, we know, but really stop comparing,
you know, other jobs to this. This is a very
unique job. It's probably one of the most unique jobs
you can ever do, and that's why people don't want
to do it. Three groomers in our area have gone
out Since twenty twenty two to now, three groomers have
gone out of business.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why. When you drive down, say, for example,
our main drag here, there's off the top of my head,
six or seventh places to get your hair cut, probably
ten places to get your nails done and there are
two groomers. Yeah, so yeah, it's not the same thing
that the hair drip. Comparing a hairdresser, that's a pretty
idiotic comment. I'm sorry, it's a really dumb comment. You
know that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, groomers complain a lot about what they do because
we have the right to complain where we have sheer
exhaustion at the end of the day, especially if we
have a big job or a difficult dog that we're
working on, and we talk about it in our videos
all the time. So you know, you dog groomers out there,
keep complaining. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: We're listening, you know, dog groomering, we spend most of
our time complaining about dog rooming to other groomers. Anyway,
it's just leave us alone, exactly.
Speaker 2: It's not complaining. We're discussing the occupation. We're discussing our job.
God forbid a dog groomer should discuss their job or
how difficult it is right away. Oh my god, you
should be loving your job. You're playing with dogs all day. No,
we're not. We're not playing with dogs all day, although
we do have a video coming up of us playing
with the dog all day.
Speaker 1: Well that's different though. That video has a purpose. It's
it's a puppy. We're breaking through to it and given freedom.
So yeah, we're playing with it, but we still have
to groom it, right.
Speaker 2: You still have to groom it.
Speaker 1: So we're playing with a goal in mind though, So
it's not stress free playing. It's playing and at the
same time praying to God we can groom this dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Look for that video. It's coming up this week,
maybe sometime this week or something. But it's a really
really cute dog and it's a puppy.
Speaker 1: No, it's out already, old, Yeah, it should be by
the time.
Speaker 2: Things behind my.
Speaker 1: Background because by the time this comes out, the video
will be out already. He was coming out tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Don't even tell me any more what you're doing.
Speaker 1: I don't need to tell him anything, okay.
Speaker 2: Anyway, he's the tech wizard.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I just the tech whiz.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took us about an hour just to set
up for this show today because of your tech wizardry.
Speaker 1: It's because you're computers from nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Well reload what did the app needed to update?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: You might want to update the app, Anthony, you know
before we talk to Mark.
Speaker 1: Or you could take a quick stroll and Best Buy. Well,
let's do that. I want to go today. Yes, I
don't want to do that right after anyway, Hurry, I
want to go to Best Buy.
Speaker 2: Now, let's roll, let's roll. So yeah. One of the
things is that the dog groomers complain. We should be
complaining to one another. Okay, so uh and and and
that's another thing that we should never do. Dog roomers
should never be talking crap about other dog roomers. That
bothers me. Stop talking crap about other dog groomers because
you know, just because you were able to do this
really hard to handle aggressive job doesn't make you a
better dog groomer than someone else, because you don't know
what that dog may have done at another shop where
it's previous grooming. Okay, for all you know, that dog
bit somebody up, bit the other dog groomer up, or
bit some one of her employees up really really badly,
or ended up getting hurt really bad. And now you
know that person, the owner of that dog, may have
table hopped and finally got to you. And because she
stopped complaining about it, or something like that, and realized
that the more I complain, the more nobody wants to
do my dog and you end up doing it. Yeah, okay, fine,
it's great that you did it, but like, don't put
down another dog roomer because they chose not to, because again,
you don't know what they may have been going through.
For all you know, they're going through a divorce or
whatever worse than that, and they just couldn't do that dog,
but you did. I've had dogs, We've had dogs here
that we were able to do that other groomers couldn't do.
Because sometimes certain dogs will just take to certain people.
You know, some dogs are more comfortable with men than
they are women, or women than they are men. Some
dogs are just more comfortable with a different environment, maybe
your shop smells differently, or a mobile groomer. So you
never know what that that dog did previously, So you
should never really talk about another dog groomer for all
you know, that other dog groomer was severely injured by
that dog that you're able to do. So again, we
need to support one another. Dog groomers need to support
one another in the sense of, hey, I couldn't do
this dog, do you want to try to do this
dog things like that. We do a lot of older dogs.
We specialize in older dogs. I can sit here and
say we specialize in older dogs. We're not that great
with puppies, really.
Speaker 1: No, you know, because puppies we run nervous and puppies
are very stressful because they don't know anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know. And don't get me wrong. You
might be that dog groomer that's just well versed and
rounded and you can do it, and that's great. Good
for you, and God bless you. We need groomers like you.
But again, don't be talking about other groomers that especially
somebody like me. I'm gonna be sixty years old soon. No,
I can't do giant breeds anymore. Been there, done that? Man?
What am I supposed to do? I can barely get
out of bed in the morning, and I'm gonna be
crawling around on the floor doing a giant breed. You know,
I've had three hernias. I got vericos veins shooting out
of my right leg. You know, I feel like they're
gonna explode and my leg is gonna fall off.
Speaker 1: You got vericos veins coming out of your eyes at
this point.
Speaker 2: Exactly, so, you know, and we still get the call, Oh,
you know, show us some giant breeds. No, sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: We have Chico, Yeah, that's it. Yeah, we have Chico one.
What is he a golden doodle or a labordodle? I
forget which.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got a couple of huge like boxers, you know.
But I'm done doing a Great Pyrenees. I can't do
a Great Pyrenees anymore. It'll kill me. I mean it'll
kill me. The job will kill you eventually. So yeah,
if you're twenty five, thirty, even forty years old and
you still feel like you can do that big great
Pyrenees or that Saint Bernard or something like that, then
by all means do it, and God bless you. But
for somebody like me that's been doing this for almost
forty years, sorry, guys, I just can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: I ain't doing a great day and either.
Speaker 2: No, you know, and you might want to question that yourself.
If you're in this career and you're creeping up and
getting older in your career, you kind of start just
taking smaller dogs, you know.
Speaker 1: And we've seen it all what you were saying before
with the dogs being okay somewhere and not being okay somewhere.
We've seen every version of that. We've had dogs that
have come to us that nobody else can do and
they're an angel for us. We've seen the opposite. We
couldn't do it. People went somewhere else. We asked, we
checked in with them. They say, oh, no, dog was great.
We've even had to tell some of our customers that,
you know, oh yeah, first couple times the dog let
us do it, and now it just hates us for
some reason we don't know. And then the customer does
it themselves in there an angel. So it's like we've
seen it all. Like you know, you just never know, right,
you never know because it's very unpredictable. Dogs are unpredictable.
That's just the way it is. And that's the purpose
of this particular podcast. And what we're talking about is
how do you do this long term?
Speaker 2: You know? And I'm telling you how I did it.
I did it by trial and error, by multiple hernias.
Like you said, you know, got a nice collection, nice
collection of hernias. I have about probably about two hundred
thousand dollars worth of hernia in me.
Speaker 1: You know, there you go, you're so some of them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, But how do you stay in this business
once you start creeping up on fifty and sixty years old?
You know, do you still have that energy? And if
you do, god bless you. I don't, you know, I'm sorry,
I don't. I'm just being honest with you, guys. Because
the industry, groomers have to support one another, I'm sorry,
we have to support one another in every aspect of this.
It bothers me when I hear groomers putting down other
groomers because in my opinion, every groomer is doing the
absolute best they can, you know. Yeah, and there's very
few of us, so you know, there's not a whole
lot to deal with. There's not a whole lot of groomers,
and there's not a whole lot of young people choosing
this profession either. Unfortunately, I was hoping it would turn
to a different way, you know, but.
Speaker 1: Well maybe it still will. I mean, we've definitely made
friends with a couple of other grooming content creators, and
especially even at like expos just enthusiasts and doesn't have
to be grooming, like Chrissy Joy where she's a friend
of ours and she's just the sweetest person in the world.
And you know, you meet trainers and groomers and all
of that. So hopefully, you know, especially because since I
see more expos you know, popping up and growing and everything,
and you know, you guys hanging out with us doing
stuff like this and watching our videos and everything. I mean,
it's definitely growing. I just don't, like you're saying, I
don't really, you know, I hope that there's no war starting,
especially between content creators, because it's not a contest, it's
it's you know, there's no reason for beef between content creators,
especially grooming content creators, because we're all doing the same thing.
Speaker 2: We are doing the same thing, and there's there's a
lot more there's a lot of newer content creators coming
up that I'm watching. I'm watching all these new guys
and it's like, these guys are great. You know, where
where have you been? You know, the more we talk
about it and the more there are demonstrating their style
where they are. I mean, you know, there's a pet
grooming over in Poland, there's another pretty popular one in
China there that just showing their stuff. And the more
we have the more the platform grows, and again you
can actually see in the content creators who's doing what
and who's specializing in what. And I think it's fantastic
and it's only going to help. So the more people
who are coming onto YouTube and talking about it. Again,
that's a form of support, and that's what we're talking about.
We need to support one another. And you know, avoid
these like idiotic comments. You get so many dumb comments
like we're grooming a dog. We've had comments where it's
like you should never cut a dog's nails. How dumb?
Is that the dumbest comment I've ever heard. You know,
wolves don't trim their nails. Okay, but your dog's not
a wolf. Your dog lives in your kitchen, your dog knee,
you know what I'm saying. Like that, that's how ignorant
some of the common wolves. You know, you should leave
dogs being natural. Dogs are not natural, Okay, they're not wolves.
Speaker 1: I remember when I put that wolf video out. God,
it's so old. I have to watch that and see
how stupid I was. But yeah, for any of you
who haven't been with us since that long ago, I
put a wolf video out about you know, our wolf's
huskies and all of that, and all somebody got out
of it was you know, you know, wolves don't cut
their nails. I don't know how do they do it?
And it's like, dude, you don't think that wolves having
to hunt and living in wooded areas or freezing cold
temperatures with the terrain, You know, they don't think that
those nails get filed down. They live in the kit
They don't live in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why are you cutting that dog's pads? It's unnatural.
You don't cut a wolve's pad. Well, a wolf needs
its pads.
Speaker 1: Because it's running through the fore again because of the terrain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the wolf isn't on a nice linoleum floor.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also a wolf isn't a dog, so it's
DNA is different. Maybe the fur under a wolf's pads
doesn't grow the same way domesticated dogs does. Yeah, I don't.
I don't think you know, the you know, chee Chi,
you're gonna gonna need as much work.
Speaker 2: I don't know, right as as alpha, you know. Yeah,
And and then we get the dumbest comments too, like
you you know, who do you think would win in
a fight, a wolf or a pit bull. Man, I
don't know. I don't want to see that.
Speaker 1: You know, the wolf would win because because you I
don't want to see it either. But the wolf would
win because just as the fight starts, the pit bull
has no idea that, oh, there's nine other wolves around
me the whole time. That's what I was hiding the animals.
Speaker 2: The wolf would win.
Speaker 1: The wolf would probably win because you guys, are you
know in Jurassic Park clever girl, Oh yeah, you're hunting
the raptors and he looks to the side and there's
one staring at him the whole time. That's what wolves do.
Speaker 2: That's what wolves do, you know. But good luck. Again,
we're just we're talking about dog rooming here. So we're
dealing with a lot, a lot of comments, a lot
of ignorant comments. But like I said, when I when
I read that comment off of the other YouTube creators
content creator channel, it bothered me. It bothered me a lot,
because it's like, how stop complaining about your job? Get
out of here. Doesn't everybody everyone complains about their job?
Why about is allowed to you know? You know, so again,
you guys want to complain, you complain to us, and uh,
you know, we'll listen. We you know, we're sympathetic, and
we're sympathetic to the client too, because ultimately, this is
what leads to, you know, a good dog groomer and
having the dog have a good experience. With that being said, guys,
this show is running low, so let's cut the brake
in and then we'll come back and we'll sum it up.
We'll talk about a few more things. We'll be right
back on. Rumor humor.
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Speaker 4: Radio, Petlfradio dot.
Speaker 6: Com Welcome back to Gloomer Humor on pet Life Radio.
Speaker 1: We are your host is always on the ray hanging
out with my dad, and today we're talking about some
of the challenges of remaining a dog room or not
even so much becoming one. It's about remaining a dog roomer.
Talking about my dad's collection of Hernia's that has grown.
So you know, it's good you're setting up for retirement
if you ever sell any of those, you know, Yeah,
and just it's a struggle. It's a struggle doing this.
You know, you just mentioned a minute ago that you know,
with the Great Pyrenees and everything. I'm thirty three. I'm
at that age right in the middle of like, yeah,
you have enough experience, you can groom and you're not
too old. Like I'm at that age where it's like
I should be doing some Great Pyrenees dogs. There are some,
you know, some bigger and I'm still not doing that
because it's just doing what we do, which is mostly
mid to smaller sized dogs, older dogs. I'm still spent
by the end of the day. Sure, and I'm only
thirty three. Yeah, I am a spring chicken. Yeah, but
my back is killing me by the end of the
day because this business just just just it.
Speaker 2: Does destroys your body absolutely. You know, you can bathe
one dog and your your back will be out for
two weeks.
Speaker 1: One dog that is shifting its weight to the back
of the tub or sitting constantly that you have to
basically lift with one hand. I've given dogs baths that
I've had to lift them. And you know, not old dogs.
You know dogs that are you know whatever, middle age.
They could stand perfectly with no hit problems, that they
just like to sit because the water makes and I
need them to stamp. I've had baths where I've picked
a dog up thirty times sure like okay, and it's okay,
like you know, it's it's.
Speaker 2: Or like even like the jump scares. As far as
like grooming a dog with a clipper, you know, I
could be doing a sanitary clip and just the dog
keeps sitting on the clipper and it's just like, you know,
you know, did I cut them? And did I cut
How many times have I said, Anthony, I think I
cut this dog, and you know, it's like, oh my god,
I didn't. I can't believe I didn't cut this dog.
Or the dog's biting at the clippers, and it's the
stress of this job. Is only another groomer or you
guys are grooming your dogs at home could relate to
try grooming your dog and then we'll talk. And then
after you do that, stay in the industry for forty years,
fifty years, and you tell me how you feel at
the end of that tunnel, because there's a good chance
you're gonna feel just like me. And I'm still in it.
I'm not going anywhere. I'm working with a severe hernia
that flares up on any given time. Right and we
be in five dogs in the day, prep everybody, and
I got to finish everybody. I still got four or
five hours of grooming left, and my hernia is on
fire to the point where I can't even move. How
am I finishing these dogs? That's what we're talking about here.
It's a lot more than say, just you know, using
certain products, right, like everybody's using certain products. And listen,
not to say that not using good quality products aren't
going to help and make your job easier or your
result is going to be better. They are. We're not
by all means, We're not saying go out there and
use bad products, but That's not what's going to keep
you in this business. Okay. What's going to keep you
in this business is your ability, your ability to deal
with stress. Number one, keeping up your confidence level. You're
constantly challenging or questioning your confidence in this meaning like
I don't know if I if I feel good enough
to do this anymore. Your attitude towards it, dealing with
rude customers. You know how you're still handling dogs after
you got bitten or you had a stressful day of
a dog trying to even bite you all day. What's
going to keep you in this business? What's your mental
state of mind? What's going to keep you in this
business is what you're feeling inside you. Okay. And again,
I've seen people give this up because they've gone through
a bad divorce or the death of a loved one.
I lost a lot of my family members and was
ready to give this up because I just couldn't deal
with the stress. It's just stress upon stress. So work
on yourself. If you guys are choosing to do this,
you really need to go inward. And I don't know
if that sounds cheesy or not, but you need to rest.
You need to rest your body. You need to rest
your mind, You need to constantly reevaluate the voice inside
you and get out there and hug a tree if
you have to. I don't know. That's what I do.
I take long walks in the park to calm myself
down and reevaluate what I do. It's subject to change
on what might be going on in your life at
any given time. Again, you might be having a really
really hard time in your life. You know, maybe God forbid,
maybe your child got sick or something like that, and
you're dealing with that, And now you're going into work
and you're dealing with, you know, someone complaining that you know,
you left the bangs too long. You see what I'm saying.
We have lives. Dog groomers have lives, and it's not
just to appease you, you see. And I think that there's
an over I don't know, there's just two much of that.
Like you know, us appeasing everyone, we have to appease
the client all the time. Well, it's hard to appease
the client when you're in physical pain or you're having
a rough time in your life. You don't want to
hear it, you know, you just don't want to hear it,
and again you still have to separate yourself and we
do hear it. And a good dog groomer is going
to tolerate that, is going to say, you know, I'm
putting my personal life aside because I have to. I
have to groom Fluffy here. You know, I don't know
if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, well it does. You know, we should design
a shirt that's said Instead of Frankie say relax, it
should be you know, groomer or Rudy say relax. Because
that's really the whole point is, like you have to
stay calm. You got to relax, you do if you
want to if you want to survive in this business. Now,
you know, you have to find a zen for us.
And it's changed a little bit through over out throughout
the years, Like you know, currently it's more just me
and you. We just talk each other through the day. Well,
we used to put the TV on, you know, sometimes
we still do out front, Uh, you know, background noise.
Not nothing too loud that'll distract you or the dogs,
but you know, background noise. Some people, one person when
the when we first started the podcast, day put our
podcast on while they're bathing. They're a dog bather. I
wonder if they're still listening. That was really Yeah, thank
you because that was that was such a sweet thing.
Speaker 2: But we always remember your kind.
Speaker 1: It was like the first first comment that this podcast
ever got. Yeah, some people listen to music or a
podcast podcast. Listening to podcasts in general is actually a
really popular one. Again, nothing overly distracting where you're gonna forget,
like you know, you have to be in the zone,
but you have to find something to relax and anything
that makes you happy. Like I said, you know you
now you know me, and you have so much to
talk about all the time. So usually we just sort
of talk to each other throughout our day. But it
does help keep calm. Take breaks. You know, you got
to be weary of taking too long a break. That's
another craziness about this business is you know you've had
times where it's like, you know, I can sit, but
I can only sit for like sixty seconds because the
longer I sit, the harder it is.
Speaker 2: To get back. Yeah, or the timer strain of getting
the dog out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you went out a time, but that just you
have to find the calmness. And I know it sounds
like a broken record, but just you know, only take
dogs that you know you can do like that. Don't
stress you to the point of wanting to quit, and
don't ever quit because of what yeah, a customer or
a potential client says to you, because that would be
the worst.
Speaker 2: That's a good point because you could be doing this
great job and it's always going to be that one
client that you listen to that rings out in your
ear like, oh my god, I'm a bad groomer now
because one person didn't like what I did exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you went through what we went through with
sites like Yelp, where you know, we have somebody who's
not even a customer of ours leaving horrible comments, lying,
and then to combat false information, we tell some of
our customers of twenty years, can you We'd never asked
you to do this, but can you push this review
down by telling everybody what a great relationship we have
with you? And then you help filters those out as
not real and it's like, wow, okay, So don't let
crap like that be the reason you get out of
being a groomer, especially if you're excelling at it.
Speaker 2: We want to give a big thanks to all of
our customers that come into our grooming shop because we
have great customers, not without weeding out a lot of
the bad customers. We basically have if three strikes your outrule.
If you don't like what I'm doing after three times,
then go somewhere else because there's nothing I can do
to sit there, and because I'm not gonna sit there
and constantly. You got that customer that's gonna complain every
grooming for years. It's not gonna make you feel good,
and it's not gonna want to make you it's not
gonna make you want to groom their dog either.
Speaker 1: No, and it's saying it's not a petty thing either.
What happens when you do that? If if you're a
customer who complains about it every time, is it just
stresses your groomer out. Now, every time you bring your
dog in, groomer is going to be more stressed about
you complaining than making sure it's a safe grooming. The
dog is going to feed off of that. So by
just complaining every time, you're creating this highly stressful environment
for your dog and your groomer. And yeah, no, it's
not worth that.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 2: What it does is it develops just a bad relationship. Okay.
If somebody's always telling you how wrong you are, how
disappointed they are and you, you're just going to get
worse and worse and it's going to develop a bad relationship.
So if you, guys, get anything out of this podcast,
you know, if you're a client of a dog groomer,
please give your dog groomer a hug. Okay, tell them,
tell them that you love what they're doing, and thank you,
which most people do. Don't get me wrong, most clients
are very very good, especially ours. But again we want
to thank you guys. And if you're a groomer, for
God's sakes, please support your fellow groomer. Okay, support your
fellow groomer. You know what they're going through. So please,
groomers need to support one another, and this is one
way to do it. Let us know what you do. Please,
whatever you do to my to calm yourself down and
keep yourself sane while you're doing this incredibly challenging occupation,
let us know. Please write it in the comments and
give us some ideas and help another groom around.
Speaker 1: All right, well that's gonna do it. Guys. Thank you
so much for hanging out with us. As always, we'd
like to thank our producer, Mark Winter. Thank you so much. Mark.
If you haven't already, head on over to our YouTube channel.
It's called Grooming by Rudy. That is Groomingbruty on YouTube
dot com. We would like, share comments, subscribe, all that
fun and stuff. You could also like Grooming Virudy on Facebook,
follow Grooming Viruty on Instagram and Twitter. It has been
an absolute pleasure. As always, take care of yourselves and
your pets.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com. Nothing