Our salon has been closed for 5 weeks. In some aspects it doesn’t seem that long but in other its been forever. Its kind of lonely walking into the empty salon. I remember in January when we closed for a few days and how it disrupted my personal routine. 5 weeks, its going to be hard to get up at 7 again.
I know many of you are anxious to get your dogs groomed. I appreciate those of you who are patiently waiting for us to open and to get everyone back on schedule. But opening wont be like it use to be. And its even more important for you to be brushing at home. We still don’t know when our official reopen date will be, so we need to plan for any possible scenarios.
The hardest part will be that we have to suspend our self wash and A La Carte services until the physical distancing is no longer recommended. This means no walk in nail trims.
All pets will be required to be bathed by us. During normal circumstances our routine is to trim nails and then put your pet into the tub for their bath. All pets are washed and dried before we trim any hair, with the only exception is pets that are matted we shave them after the bathing process before the drying process using a technique commonly referred to as a Wet Shave. Our new procedure will be to trim nails after the bathing process so this will be an easy transition for us in that aspect.
What will be complex is how we interact with you. We normally see 85 appointments a week. We will be reducing that to 72, by adding an extra day. For the next few weeks and probably throughout the summer we will be open Monday-Saturday. This reduced appointments is to allow us to manage a new routine for sanitation. This will also cause a bit of a back log. When you come for your appointment the salon door will be locked. You will call or text or honk when you arrive. You may pull up to the curb. We will either retrieve your pet from your backseat with our own slip style lead or have you bring your pet into the front room and place them into a kennel and take your pets leash and collar with you. Once you leave we will retrieve your pet and sanitize the door, kennels etc. We will do the same routine on pick up. Please be prompt with your scheduled drop off and pick up times as we cannot be lax at this time due to maintaining physical distancing.
We will be setting up appointments taking those who had an appointment during quarantine first. Once those appointments are made we will open up appointments to the rest of our clients. We will not be taking new clients in this initial period unless you had previously made an appointment before we were shut down. We will be excited to take new clients once we have settled in with our existing client base.
Payments will be made online using our email invoicing option. When you make your appointment make sure we have a current phone number and email on file. To speed up this process you can text us any time between now and your appointment with your pets name, your name and your email. We can use this downtime to update your files.
We currently have gift certificates on sale on our website. These do not have an expiration date and can be used at any time. Unfortunately due to circumstances your pets grooming may be more than usual if it takes extra time to groom. Another reason to be extra vigilant about brushing AND COMBING. If your pet is on a regular schedule with us and has not been combed we may have to take your pets coat shorter but you will probably not incur any extra charges.
We hope to be open in the next week or so, but that decision lies in the hands of the government. The are the ones who can shut down my business permanently if I do not fully comply with their orders. At this time. In Kentucky, no grooming should be done by any groomer in any circumstances. If there was a loophole, trust me, I would find it. All I can do is challenge the states authority or comply and last time I challenged them it didn’t go so well. So I have to tread lightly here.. so all my rebel friends just need to hang tight.. Things aren’t dire yet.
We appreciate all of you and want to make this transition easy for all of us. Hope to see you all soon! ❤️?
