I’m Still Here!

Hello, Blogosphere! I feel like it’s been forever since I last posted, probably because it’s been over a week now! I’ve been busy working; I had over 40 hours last week, and will have close to 40 again this week. I’m not complaining though, it’s just been pretty busy.

I am absolutely loving the groom room! The Groomer tries to teach me something new every day, which is really great. We still don’t have the proper dryer, so that’s been a lot of fun! In a way I feel like it’s been helpful though, because once we get the correct dryer, I’ll be able to do an even better job and perfect my technique with more ease! It’ll be nice. Plus it’s good to learn how to compromise early on.

My job right now is to help the other Bather with washing and drying the dogs. The Groomer preps them, and then we wash and dry them. The prep work includes: checking their ears and taking out any hair that’s growing in them, cleaning the pads of the feet (sometimes done later), sanitary trim (sometimes done later), clipping the nails (sometimes done later), and taking hair off if the dog is going to have a lot of hair coming off them. This way, when we wash we don’t have to wash a ton of hair and take a long time drying it when it’s just going to come right off anyway! When she does this, she just does a general trim of it, but goes back and does the actual groom once we’re finished with the dog. Some groomers refuse to do this since it can shorten the life of the clippers/scissors by using them on dirty hair, but our Groomer doesn’t mind and it helps our workload which is really nice!

It’s now Christmastime, which is how long they had scheduled me working three days in the groom room. Some changes are taking place; the team leader for boarding is being switched to someone else, since the lady in charge right now has some health issues and isn’t able to be there as often as a team leader needs to be. If the new team leader works out (which she should, she handles a lot of the stuff anyway), the Boss Man is going to hire someone else for boarding, and I will be moving solely to the Groom Room!! 😀 I am super excited. We’re not expecting that until March, but if things work out and he can find someone for boarding it could happen sooner. I’ll let you know! So for now I’ll keep my three days, but since I’m doing really well in there, and they can tell I want to continue learning and working in the groom room, I’ll be getting more hours in there in the future.

Depending on how everything works out, The Groomer and I have talked about perhaps having me come in sooner and take over the prep work as well at some point in the future, and then seeing how it goes with learning more on the grooming aspect of things, I might be able to eventually get my own dogs to groom! We have a lot of ‘regular’ dogs who get groomed every few weeks, so those dogs are much easier to do since they come in a lot. Depending, I might be able to get a couple of those dogs to do all on my own! It’ll be a ways away from now, but I’m really looking forward to that. It’s been a great opportunity so far, and I’m absolutely loving it which is great!

That’s what’s been going on with work for the most part, I’ll try to write again sooner than over a week next time! Since this is getting long, I’ll save my update on Rocky and the cats and whatnot else in life for the next post. I hope everyone’s having a great week, and looking forward to the holidays!! Any big plans for Christmas??