At What Age Can Your Pet Be Taken in for Grooming?

If you’ve recently brought home a new puppy, you might be wondering how long you need to wait before you can start taking your puppy to the groomer. It’s important that, no matter what, you make your puppy’s first grooming experience a positive one so all future experiences will go as smoothly as possible.

Help your puppy get used to grooming at home first by performing some basic grooming tasks. You should regularly touch, pet and pat your puppy all over its body, including paws and toes. This will help your puppy get used to being handled. Socializing your puppy with other people who don’t live in your house is also important—you want your dog to be comfortable when around strangers so it does not get fearful or aggressive.

You can introduce your puppy to a professional groomer as early as 10 to 12 weeks of age, or after it has had its second round of vaccines. Most dogs that require pet grooming in Henderson, NV will need to be groomed once every month or two, on average.

The first appointment

The very first grooming appointment for your puppy will likely be the longest, because it is a brand new experience that your puppy will not be used to. Plus, when they’re puppies, dogs have much shorter attention spans, and are probably not going to behave as well as older dogs. This is perfectly fine and normal.

Again, it’s important to make your puppy as comfortable as possible and put it in a position where it will have no problem trusting the groomer. The groomer will use a gentle touch to reassure the puppy that he or she can be trusted. During the appointment, the groomer will thoroughly brush out the puppy’s hair to remove tangles or knots, and trim the nails, clean the airs and brush the teeth. A grooming session is also an opportunity to give the puppy a nice warm bath with shampoo and conditioner, followed by towel and blow drying.

After the bath is complete, the groomer will begin the haircut. This is usually the most difficult task for puppies, and it’s generally recommended that you start slowly and small with the first cut. Rather than doing a full-body haircut, have the groomer do a foot trim, face trim and sanitary cut. This covers the most important parts of the standard haircut and allows the puppy to acclimate to some of the sounds, smells and sights of the grooming salon without it being too overwhelming or frightening of an experience. Once you bring your puppy back for the second appointment, then you can go into the full-body trim.

Make sure you continue to brush and comb your puppy in between appointments to avoid matting.

For more information about taking your puppy to the groomer and how to get it used to the grooming experience, we encourage you to contact the team at The Soggy Dog to learn about pet grooming in Henderson, NV. We look forward to meeting you and your puppy!

Categorised in: Grooming

This post was written by Writer