Lucky Dog Grooming

Lucky Dog Grooming

Written by Rachel Youens Friday, 07 September 2007

Every dog has its day (spa).

Cutting hair sounds like an easy job, but at most salons the clients’ bark is worse than their bite. At Lucky Dog, they can both be pretty bad.

For a year, Lucky Dog Grooming has been transforming dogs from mangey to manicured.

“It’s really rewarding to see a scruffy dog come in, and then a nice-looking one leave,” owner Jeff Kikkert said. “A lot of what we do looks easy, but simple things like brushing and cutting can be really tricky, and you don’t know unless you’ve done it.”

Before opening Lucky Dog, one of the first challenges Kikkert faced was simply finding a location that would allow animals.

“Dogs can be really hard on property, so I searched for about six months before I found a landlord that would agree to the use,” Kikkert said. “They were also nervous I was a startup business and maybe not a reliable tenant.”

Though their name may be deceiving, the shop grooms cats as well as dogs. According to Kikkert, Lucky Dog doesn’t need any secret tricks for washing the notoriously difficult animals.

“Actually, most cats are calmer for us than they are at home. It’s a different environment here, and the cat isn’t in its home space, so they act better,” he said.

Before opening his own shop, he honed his skills at a pet supply chain and he strives to fill in the gaps of what was missing in their service.

“There’s more personal attention to the animals here. There also isn’t noise, or children looking in on the dogs and banging on the windows. Dogs pick up on these things, and it makes grooming much less stressful.”

And a stress-free environment is a good thing to have when you’re trying to do something like paint a dog’s toenails. While the shop doesn’t specialize in fancy treatments, Kikkert said Lucky Dog has put mohawks and dye jobs on dogs, but it takes a patient animal to allow it.

Besides grooming, Lucky Dog also offers do-it-yourself washing stations for owners. The shop provides towels, tubs and soap; all a pet owner needs to bring is their pet.

“The advantage to washing your pet here rather than at home is that our facilities are made to accommodate pet washing, rather than doing it in your kitchen sink,” Kikkert said. “There’s a lot less mess this way, and there’s always staff around here to help and offer advice on how to get better control of the animal or a better way to get them clean.”

Oddly enough, the owner of Lucky Dog owns no dogs himself, but instead has two cats, Chico and Marcus.

“I love dogs,” Kikkert said “but I see a lot of them at work.”

Lucky Dog’s services include:

• Bathing
• Grooming
• Nail clipping
• Self-service washing
• Toy and treat sales
• Cat grooming (which is rare, most places don’t groom cats but Kikkert says he’s perfectly comfortable with them)

Lucky Dog Grooming, 9725 Anderson Mill Rd, 331-7222

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