With a heart for gentle grooming and being one-on-one with her dogs, Suzie Battershell, owner of SoftPaws Pet Spa & Boutique, has created a salon environment that is quiet and calm. Suzie started her business as a mobile groomer.
The heart behind starting out mobile? Suzie says, “It allowed me to work one-on-one with the dogs. I could handle high-anxiety dogs, senior dogs that couldn’t come to a typical salon and also dogs with special needs and disabilities. As we started to grow, I realized I needed a home base for my team and I needed a backup in case one of the mobile units went down.”
While she still operates her two mobile units, Suzie’s storefront, located off Hess and Parker Road, has become a surreal base for her growing business and team. Her goal to treat each dog with gentle care has only found deeper roots with the store.
From the lobby, a glass door leads to the back grooming area. Suzie draws the picture, “There’s three individual grooming rooms, each with a tub, dryer and table, everything needed to do the entire process. Your dog is not passed separately from a kennel to the bathing station, then to drying and hair cut - It’s all done in one space and with the same groomer.”
“We groom one-on-one and we go straight through, so your appointment time is the actual time that we start grooming your pet. This tremendously reduces the stress on your dog because they’re not already triggered by other dogs barking, and they’re not triggered by being put in a kennel. They’re with one groomer for their entire session until they’re ready to go home.”
One of her biggest goals is for her salon to be calm and peaceful and Suzie has struck gold with that experience. She talks about how one afternoon, the back rooms were all filled with pets being groomed and there weren’t any dogs barking. She was shocked, but also content to realize the personal experience she started with in the mobile grooming translated to her beautiful boutique as well.
For dogs who have had a poor grooming experience, Suzie advises, “The first thing I tell people is to bring them to us and let us see. I’ve found that a lot of times dogs will have issues elsewhere, but then when they come in to us, it’s fine and they don’t have any issues. If they do, then we just work slowly with them to reacclimate them to the grooming process.”
She also talks about how they approach each client with a motivation to educate. Suzie and her team recognize that grooming is not always for vanity purposes. A lot of times, grooming is for health and comfort. Suzie mentions that doodles and dogs with double coats need regular grooming to stay healthy and happy.
“When a coat is matted, the fur can actually start to pull out of the skin, leaving bald patches as it gets tighter. If moisture gets underneath, they’re going to end up with a bacterial or fungal infection,” Suzie explains. “Double-coated dogs need regular grooming because their fur is so heavy and they have two coats. That second coat will compact against their skin. It prevents air flow and it makes it hard for them to regulate their temperatures.”
Suzie is also actively creating a space for cat boarding and is getting her certification as a feline master groomer.
Sign up for a free meet and greet with Suzie at www.suziesoftpaws.com or call (720) 774-7879.