are offered at the facility we have full that unary services grooming services we have pet care daycare boarding and it's just all one big package so it's a catch all place for everything you need for pet care it is and you've been in how long i actually grew up in peter's to actually graduate peter's high school thirty some years ago now so so it's been in the area for our soft opening was back in may this year and then the grand opening was june this year so we've been open ever  it take to become a grower and alex you can start off with that if you would there's a lot of different ways to get into a dog grooming there's classes that you can take and there's also apprenticeships i personally did an apprenticeship with a certified master groomer and a lot of hands on work in just learning as you go and  the same way so for years i lectured at various grooming seminars like one in hershey and even more than it had in those ads and so i got to know a lot about grooming and how they operate and how they prepare for they're actually quite an interesting profession grammar and you see a broad range of dogs when somebody comes what services traits here they are looking for in grooming just depends on the breed of dog they have obviously this is a high maintenance dog she requires a lot of grooming as far as plucking cutting the hair out of the ears which is common in a lot of breeds so why do you want your pluck opinions vary depending on doctors i would think alex and i are both in agreement and the doctors that we work for that when the hair grows inside the ear if you can see her ears have not been this just a breeding ground for bacteria and any kind of anything that's going to grow down in there you have a nice warm environment so this actually helps oxygen in the air get to down into the ear canal that can keep it free of debris and any any kind of bacteria was nice it was growing there so i i think a lot of people have a perception the grooming is bathing the dog and trimming the hair and so forth and that's all course part of it but you go beyond that beyond yeah that's just that's just minuscule obviously toenail trends you know dogs can't cope and that's going to be an interesting because i know when i go to take care of my i do my own dogs veils and it's always trauma it can't be yes dogs tend to have that fear of somebody grabbing their paws so how do you guys handle that patient patient so you usually have one person holding holding the dog and then the other person cutting the nails is that what you do yeah if it comes to that sometimes some dogs they receive a better than others you can do it by yourself sometimes it's a wrestling match to three people for sometimes on the dog sometimes you gotta get him upside down on their back for me and they get on that and they see those clippers coming and they go out on no even sometimes when i say to my dogs when they get a bath weekly generally and i'll say bath time and one goes this direction i walk tracks and i'm sure would people bring in their pets do you have that same issue that they know their routine some of them are not fond of it some of them love it i had dogs that actually loved having that we had and clientele they just run to the door can't wait to get in there see it's roll over high happy to be there others are just trying to make a beeline back out of the beltway in so this your plucking you were speaking of tracy is pretty much like them as well right you know something that i haven't had to deal with over all these years tracey what are the what are their procedures the steps involved in me bringing my dog in for growing i call up make an appointment or just walking eight to eight so we've got later hours and earlier hours we also provide daycare for people who want to drop their dogs off beat for work have them groomed and then pick them up after work and so that's pretty convenient because you have your dog being taken care of while you work or away or doing something for the day and then you can have the services done so is that a catch all service like i bring in under the banner of grooming and then i know i'm getting my nails cut on the get the earplugs i'm the painting the years all inclusive packages we've got paper packages that include extra services like facials and toenail grinding to get your dog's toenails shorter and smoother and the shedding treatments and loosens up the undercoat followed with a conditioner to also help grab that under coat and pull it out we have a special novel on our bathing system that will pull all of that dead code out then we follow up with a force dryer that also dries and forces all of the dead coat out of that dog and then we follow up with lots of brushing with different tools that that will help pull out undercoat as for a full service how long would it really depends on the dog on the size of the dog in his condition and his temperament also so how many does and a d c tracy again it goes back to what you know how many different breeds you see if there's a lot of hands on work if it's you know high maintenance where there's a lot of grooming clipper and then scissoring in or like a mini smooth d that could take a little more like an hour or two hours or so depending on how many we see but you could do so many ten twelve thirteen fourteen dogs a day but if it's all hands on scissor work then obviously it's more time so your every day for use different every day is different and so it's different because of the breed of dog that you come in how many dogs you see and how the owners are it's just that ratio that dogs to actually fall grooms is they're a breed that you see more often and either one of you can answer that wow a lot of people always do the little puff things and you do all that kind of sculpturing and so for we do are the different fees for the amount of work that you do on the on the different dogs absolutely so there's one you want take that yeah we charge differently depending on the  and pompoms on his tail and things like that that that's going to be more work so it's it's going to be a little bit more so so pretty much mimics what a typical hearse along would be doing sure yeah so a little place i need to visit for myself holidays and make it a fun experience for the owners and their dogs so the dogs don't look at you like what are you doing you know they really don't mind to marry my just what would be the length of time that that would take to do the nose like painting them doesn't take as long as they're drying time which we all do use pet save dog nail polish that is quick drying but it was still you want to let it set for a few minutes so usually they're on our table for about ten minutes with  and i've yet to see that actually what i used to see when i go to the grooming shows they would basically tie dye the dogs and a lot of them were were standard poodles and they were so they would trim them up and then you have this part blue the top of the head blue on the side flanks green and the people do that a lot and there i don't personally do it alex i think has potential to do it i think she does do a lot of creative design that i've seen in her october so we wanted gelati which is the little time doggie obstacle course and one weekend they actually asked us to recognize everybody wears pink so i will kind of color her talk not this is her talk not the tassels and had to put her tail i will die pink and we actually tried to sculpt a the of the pink ribbon into the side of her but she just wasn't tolerating it so we had to abolish that might imagine that's going to be difficult with some animals because they're squirming and moving and you need to have a steady hand and a steady dog how would you do that and it actually went back to she's been up on the grooming table since she was four weeks old and she was a former show dog so she's used to being up there does she like it probably not she'd rather be out chasing a ball and doing something more fun but she's pretty p tolerant so the grooming table is a certain height from the type of harness that supports the dog correct to different various different i work on one one one one side up and she works on another word my arm is at the grooming arm comes up over the table goes around the neck and she stands perpendicular to me or any dog would be perpendicular to me they also have an arm that actually comes up completely over for dogs that have a little more difficulty standing up you can harness them up behind the arms around the neck but up around the waist as well so sometimes you have challenges there and it is a lot to be stable in which case sometimes it would require both harnesses because you don't want them to step back off the table you don't want any pressure up under that tree or anything that would cause injury just the tolerance of squeezing their feet the pressure from the nail clippers we do you draw the nail grinding so that's more noise just get them acclimated to all those noises and being away from mom and dad you know being with strangers how this is going to get them started at a young age that our family was drifting apart until we found the connection you have the power to change your child's life the boy's town national hotline can help of dogs with a variety of conditions and we were talking briefly and you had mentioned that use of a drama was from the nels and that's actually what i reverted to in treating taking care of the dogs my dogs and that worked pretty well i think the pressure from the clippers was traumatic for them and they didn't like initially the sound of the drum on they didn't like to be careful of course generates heat so they didn't like that and but after a few times of using it they became accustomed to it not so traumatic and it's quick you get in there and grind those down and smooth them off and if you do a little bit every week those nails don't grow and i think that quick it tell us what the quick is tracing quick is the vein that actually underneath the nail inside the nail and it has blood flow and that's actually what helps the create growth as it is but yes it's easy to make it even as grim as we know them people are afraid to do toenails they do bleed unfortunately but the dremel itself it is safer because you're just gradually going back and going backwards that skin infections so you're special treatments for that and then you recommend that to the owners to have those or how do you deal with skin problem we do as you said just walking in the door upon assessment you know you have a dry skin there and we can offer a variety of different shampoos to help with that but also with in conjunction the veterinarian veterinarians that we have on service if it's something a little more severe like they do get used infections bacterial infections then we pull them in and they recommend shampoos from the veterinary side that that's nice and then just kind of a one stop place because it every day life and how busy everybody is it's sometimes difficult to run over here to run over here right over here so with skin conditions western pennsylvania is known for deer ticks and and it seems like every so many years there's a flea infestation where you were fleas are everywhere and then there's a ticket and for a station do you see people coming in with first stations and to flea treatments that they have out there now but ticks ticks have become super super bad and we've been seeing lots of tick infestations and a lot of dogs coming in with lines and it is easy from t to take them out carefully while removing their head because you don't want to leave that and i'm that's an issue because if you leave the head inside the skin then it continues to inject the bacteria and then the virus or whatever or it actually fester and become foreign body it doesn't belong there but it actually could you know if it embeds in there and you don't get it out then it could actually abscess out later and then that's a big mess and infection and that again you can probably trying go back in there with  monday three different dogs all three with ticks i've seen very few fleas again because back to all those there are so many products now that are safe whether it's oral or you know just the oil on the back there are so many different products that they can take it takes more of a problem the fleas and limes is rampant right now so yeah i think we've all been exposed to i think if we were all tested with the problem test we would all show line issues and of bodies so the owners know that they have the ticks and that was part of the reason they brought the dogs in or you were just saw the fifty fifty three that i took off all three were completely unaware that all had longer hair on it and that's a problem long hair dogs or black dogs or really dark brown dogs and the ticks are the same color and if you're not massaging your dog or rubbing your petting and how do you know the take is even there they kind of sneak up on us a goes back to when we're drawing the dog it's a high velocity dryer so really separates the hair and just kind of catches you by surprise you see it is brown or on a white dog or is that it would absolutely have the dog because it is becoming such a problem in western pennsylvania and really everywhere in this in this region's once a year vaccine protect the dog be safe as part of the grooming procedure do it is a scent gland so we double check and express them in the tub if they don't if they don't express easily or if we get resistance then it's time for that insurance is since because it is very tied up in there and you don't want that hardens the correct the mucous hardens so what is the basic grooming involved i just have i want my dog groom what is what is your basic groom involved well for a bath dog like a short haired docs and or a labrador it would be the bathing it's brushing its nails and its ears ok you're plucking you're cleaning your claim on a short hair on a short haired dog that doesn't have your hair and then we also shave out their  pads keeping that hair clean or pretty prevents things from getting into that hair and that hair matting up most dogs have hair on their pads even if they have short hair it prevents them slipping on their owners floors and things like that and using their toenails to stop themselves it creates more of a surface for them to actually walk on and save their their owners hardwood floors and things like that and with a dog like we would include the haircut portion of it and that's one basic fee for all those services and then you package other fees other services with with packagers or become a card after that we we have a few different packages like we have a pamper package where you can pick three of a certain thing like tony on grinding you can add on teeth brushing you can add on facials on there and really makes their paws more supple we also have pad conditioners for dogs that are outside a lot if you take a dog on the ice in the snow and things like that it can be very drying and very harsh so we have pad conditioners that we can put on to restore moisture but also per protect from the ice and lift falls tracy do you recommend people putting boots on the dogs for winter and a couple past winners that we've had just good so brutal and minus seven i don't know if you've ever had it on my own dog she can just go out for a quick quick mission goes down over the hill and she's out there maybe twenty twenty five seconds you get into minus seven ice gets in those feet and the pa comes out yeah and she's side stepping up because they get frostbite very quickly if the dog is out for prolonged activity you want to send the dog outside riding with the kids absolutely warmer days thirty forty degrees i don't think it's really that necessary but if you walk them on the street and there is like a l know i've seen dogs sometimes just pick their paws up and start to look to get the salt off and you certainly don't want them looking there that's again it goes back to why we shave the hair out of the pads you know the salt and debris from cinders and everything doesn't get stuck up in there and then it becomes an irritant they lick and that becomes more irritating because they're looking in that chafes and i hosted i was the mc a big event and the rose bowl in california for dogs it was a pet expo and the the schedule it in june because in california that in southern california they have something called june bloom in the skies get gray cloudy and sort of like pittsburgh and and so that the sun rays are coming up the blacktop and all of that  gloom didn't happen and there were thousands of people coming to this to this event and everybody that was selling boots of some sort sold out like within seconds because the dogs couldn't walk on and so what what those sponsors did of the show was they went out and bought pantyhose and nylons and so forth and made ties and made these makeshift boots for people so the dogs we think we were shoes for the most part the dogs don't and we think they're just it's ok to walk in a salt cold heat burn their feet and they're very responsive to that and they don't like you know the dogs start doing pick me up daddy pick me up you know so that's something i think we need to be cautious cautious with when we're we're out walking our dogs vaseline on the pads do anything say to soften them up if they think it will of course you know dry cracked irritation that would be comparable to diaper rash so the sanitary is always involve for dogs that grow hair in that labradors they don't really grow like a lot of belly here that sort of thing but that would all be included and then of course the full haircut as well and offer you a minister you know if it's a breed such as joey or little bush on earth some of the gross hair that routinely shits use are very common in this area every four to six weeks depending on how long or how short you keep the dog along with the dog obviously high maintenance i also recommend if you don't want it specially in the winter when people are just so in tune to want to be cold well you leave a dog this long you can leave a dog this long it's just they still the same density of coat so you should still how absolutely have the dog groomer is going to mack and then you're going to have a short dog that's going to need a coat and it's going to be cold you don't necessarily have to have a haircut every four to six weeks you alternate ok you're ok we're not all at once a month just come in just for a bath and brush and all services and they're all back in trac