The First Groom Decides How He Feels About Every Groom After It

He's twelve pounds of doodle, he's been home three weeks, and his face is starting to disappear behind his eyebrows. Somebody at the dog park told you that if you get the first groom wrong you'll be paying for it for a decade.

That last part is annoyingly close to true, so it's worth doing properly. The good news is that doing it properly mostly means doing less.

When is he old enough for his first groom?

Once your vet says his vaccinations are far enough along, which is a question for them and not for us.

After that, sooner is better than later. The instinct is to wait until he needs a haircut. The problem is that by then he's a bigger, stronger, more opinionated dog meeting clippers for the first time. A puppy who has already had a bath, a blow out and his feet handled while all of it was mildly boring is a much easier dog at eight months.

You don't need a reason. He doesn't have to be dirty or shaggy. The first appointment is about the experience, not the coat.

What actually happens at the first appointment?

The van pulls up outside your house and parks. One dog inside at a time, no cages, one groomer doing the whole thing start to finish. Nothing about the day involves a car ride or a kennel.

Then, roughly in this order: a hello and a couple of minutes of just being in the van. A wash in warm water. A blow out, usually starting on a low setting well away from his head so the noise arrives gradually. A nail trim. An ear clean. Some tidying with scissors around the eyes, the feet and the back end so he can see and stay clean. That's the bath package, and for a lot of puppies that's the whole first appointment.

The whole thing runs about an hour, often less. If he's had enough at forty minutes, we stop at forty minutes. A puppy who leaves the van slightly bored is the best possible outcome, and a puppy who leaves it frightened costs you years.

Why did he come back looking almost the same?

Because that's what a good first groom looks like, and we should say so before you're standing in the driveway wondering.

The first appointment is a lot of introduction and only a little haircut. Full clipper work on a puppy who has never heard a clipper is how you make a dog who dodges the clipper for life. So your groomer will run them against his shoulder while they're off, then on and away from him, then briefly on his back, and stop there if that's where his patience runs out.

The haircut you have in your head, the one from the photo you saved, comes at groom two or three. Nothing is lost by waiting six weeks for it. Quite a lot is gained.

You'll get a note afterwards on how he did, what he was easy about and what he found hard. It's the same thing every dog gets, and there's more on how we use it in the groom report card.

What can I do this week to make it easier?

Small boring things, done often. Ten minutes total, not a project.

Touch his feet. Hold one for two seconds while he's sleepy and let go before he pulls away. Feet are the number one lifelong grooming fight and this is where you win it.

Look in his ears. Lift a lip. Run a brush over him even when he doesn't need it, especially if he's a doodle or anything curly, because those coats change texture somewhere around eight or nine months and the owners who get ambushed by matting are always the ones who stopped brushing.

Turn a hairdryer on somewhere else in the house on a low setting while he eats. He doesn't need to meet it, he just needs to have heard something like it before.

And if you catch yourself apologizing to him at the van door, that one's worth noticing. Dogs read tone, and a worried voice tells him something is about to go wrong.

How often after the first one?

Depends entirely on his coat.

Smooth coats, a bath every couple of months. Standard and curly coats, closer to every month. Double coats want a real de-shed twice a year with baths in between. Puppies with curly or standard coats are the ones where the schedule really matters, because the adult coat coming in through the puppy coat is how a comfortable dog becomes a matted one in about five weeks flat.

Short intervals also mean shorter, easier appointments, which is the whole point at this age.

What does a puppy groom cost?

Coat and weight set the price, so a twelve pound puppy sits at the bottom of it. Bath packages start at $75, and a full groom, the bath plus the haircut, costs more on top of that. Since most first appointments are a bath and a tidy up rather than a real haircut, the first one is usually the cheapest groom he'll ever have.

There's a trip fee as well, set by where you are, and you see the exact figure in your booking confirmation before anything is scheduled.

We do a lot of first grooms around Highland Park, and if yours is landing in a busy season, a puppy's first groom before the holidays covers the timing side of it.

Mostly, though, relax about it. He is going to smell wonderful and look about the same, and that's the appointment doing its job.