Groom Boom
Busy Bay Area pet lovers can't find enough professionals to cater to their critters

by David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
© 1999 San Francisco Chronicle  Saturday, November 27, 1999
Published with their permission.

``This is terrier week,'' announced instructor Michelle Higbee. The five students gathered at Madeline's Institute of Pet Grooming in Santa Clara exchanged looks of excitement.

Higbee drew a diagram of a terrier on the whiteboard. She sketched in little arrows to show how the fur should be trimmed.

``With a schnauzer,'' she told the class, ``you bring the clipper down and airplane off.''

The students took careful notes, already familiar with clipper techniques such as ``airplaning.''

``With an Airedale,'' Higbee continued, ``it's pretty much the same. You want to blend. Like you did with the cocker.''

Her students nodded their understanding. Terriers would be no trouble.

These are boom times in the pet grooming business. There just aren't enough skilled groomers to go around as growing numbers of busy, well-off pet owners seek out professional help in keeping their pooches and kitties bathed, fluffed and coiffed.

Stephen Mart, a business consultant for groomers and operator of the Petgroomer.com Web site, estimates that on any given day, there are 500 job openings for skilled groomers nationwide.

The Bay Area, he said, has the country's highest average -- 29 openings at any one time. ``The Bay Area has a very high pet population,'' Mart observed, adding that the region's on-the-go lifestyles and surging economy also boost demand for groomers.

Mart should know. His mother is Madeline Bright-Ogle, who sold Madeline's Pet Grooming Salon to Higbee in 1987 and is herself a prominent pet grooming industry consultant. Mart helped Higbee launch her affiliated pet grooming school in 1997.

There are about 50 licensed pet grooming academies throughout the country. Most are small affairs, often no more than a sidelight for a local pet salon. The only other Bay Area grooming school is run by the San Francisco SPCA.

Madeline's is one of the nation's biggest. Because the adjoining salon has nearly 5,000 regular clients, students have a steady stream of pets on which to practice -- a plus that has attracted budding groomers from as far off as Singapore and Indonesia.

Tuition for the 14-week program runs $3,600. Students also are required to shell out an extra $1,000 for equipment. Higbee said that the school typically sees six students per quarter and that enrollment is rising by about 5 percent a year.

``People are tired of jobs that don't give you emotional rewards,'' she said prior to beginning the day's terrier lesson. ``This is big-time emotionally rewarding.''  Professional pet grooming is not, however, all that financially rewarding. Most groomers pull down about $30,000 a year.

Then again, most groomers will insist that they're not in it or the money. A love of animals, naturally, is the main draw, plus a sense that working with humans is just, well, too complicated.

Heather McLain, 24, graduated with top academic honors from Santa Clara University a couple of years ago. She had expected at the time to pursue post-graduate work in psychology.

Working with human subjects, however, just didn't have the same appeal as working with animals. And so she ended up instead at the Institute of Pet Grooming.

``It's the weirdest thing,'' McLain said while studying grooming hints at her classroom workstation. ``I just finally came to terms with what I wanted to do. This is what makes me happy.''

Higbee, 43, isn't surprised to hear her students talk like that. She, too, followed a love of animals into grooming school, and then turned that passion into a livelihood with her purchase of Madeline's, which has been keeping up appearances among Peninsula pets for nearly four decades.

"You have to be an extremely patient person for this kind of work,'' Higbee noted. ``You have to be the type who doesn't mind hard work.

``The reward is when a pet starts to recognize you and give you kisses. That makes it all worthwhile.''

It was enough for Pam Gillies-Heaney, 44, who walked away from a high-paying career assisting with Silicon Valley startups, enrolled at Madeline's and is now the school's customer service manager.

``The last startup I worked with got bought out,'' she said. ``All of a sudden it hit me that although I loved putting startups together, I was getting burned out. It was giving me financial returns but not emotional returns. I needed emotional returns.''

Gillies-Heaney still gets calls from venture capitalists asking if she has gotten this pet-grooming thing out of her system and is ready to tackle another startup. She turns them all down.

For her, it's simple: Technology is cold; terriers are warm.

For Christina and Jeff Ekeland, pet grooming represents a chance to launch their own business and build a career together. After graduation, the Livermore couple plan to provide a mobile grooming service for upscale clients in the East Bay.

``I was just flipping through the TV one day and saw a lady on the Maury Povitch show who did professional poop scooping,'' 28-year-old Christina Ekeland recalled. ``That got my wheels spinning.''

She ended up talking her 30-year-old husband into quitting his job with a construction company and enrolling at Madeline's. They have already invested about $60,000 in a specially equipped van and other gear.

Pet-grooming school, they both agree, will give them a leg up in the industry.

``When I go to somebody's house and see that they have a poodle, I want to know that I can do it,'' Jeff Ekeland said.

``And do it right,'' his wife chimed in.

In fact, mobile grooming is a growing trend on the West Coast, said Karen Long MacLeod, editor in chief of Groom & Board magazine in Chicago. East Coast pet owners apparently have enjoyed such convenience for years.

MacLeod also sees growth opportunities for fancy ``pet spas,'' where Rover and Whiskers can enjoy opulent surroundings while having their hygiene needs attended to.

``People like to pamper their pets,'' she observed with considerable understatement.

A survey published by Groom & Board in June found that 43 percent of pet groomers are seeing at least 10 percent more in sales this year than in 1998 and that the average grooming charge has increased nearly 13 percent to $28.74 from $25.21.

At Madeline's, a bath and trim for a medium-size dog runs about $35, while the same treatment for a cat will cost about $40.

Cats, needless to say, are a bit tougher to get into a tub of water, blow dry and snip. All the students at the school said scratches, and the occasional bite, are simply an occupational hazard.

The class gathered around a work table as Higbee demonstrated the day's lesson on a schnauzer named Amy. ``Poodles have more of a round look,'' Higbee stressed. ``Terriers have more of a square look.''

And a new generation of pet groomers watched with attentive, hopeful eyes as she proceeded to shear and airplane Amy's fur.

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