Many career seekers find it difficult to believe that the vast majority of pet groomers in the U.S. do not belong to any pet grooming associations. Estimates of membership are as low as 5% in the U.S. Without more formal organization and standardization commonly associated with a more formally recognized profession, the pet grooming industry suffers from poor communication between pet groomers, pet owners and career seekers. Perhaps now you better understand why we formed Find A Groomer Inc. and PetGroomer.com to establish new communication channels. Thousands of career seekers contacted our offices in the 1980s asking for a source of career information and we were hard pressed to give them information other than some book titles and to check for local vocational schools offering grooming.

The Internet has done more to mobilize the profession in the last decade than the past 50 years. Every year more grooming industry websites come online. Many of its brightest and best groomers continue to expand educational resources with more schools, home study and reference materials such as grooming books and DVDs.

Yet your exploration of the industry may uncover that thousands of grooming business owners are still stuck in the past not communicating constructively with their peers and associates, and they usually fall back on the barriers of labeling other members of the industry as “their competition,” and that means progress is idle everywhere for the most part. We are not like them, and neither are thousands loyal to PetGroomer.com and its GroomerTALK Community℠. In fact, we’re shooting cannonballs at the limited attitudes holding our profession in the past, and we hope that you will join us.

Every day thousands of groomers and career seekers go online and share grooming information with one another. Our PetGroomer.com GroomerTALK Community℠ is a popular destination. These participants are a vital sign, a hopeful indication that at an industry level we can come together and secure more professional recognition. One way is the traditional process of vocational licensing, hopefully written by and for groomers with governmental acceptance, or better yet, to establish an alternate system under our control requiring groomers to meet minimum standards of education and performance and to maintain a database of approved groomers. Thereby we can uplift pet grooming to the status of a valid profession recognized by every household.

Until then we must be grounded in the realization that our fascinating and valuable industry is fragmented. The absence of standardization in how we operate grooming businesses, education and services for pet owners leaves most everything to personal interpretation. For example, most career seekers generally believe that they will get the same grooming education regardless of the school, home study or apprentice program they complete. Nothing could be further from the truth in this industry. We even help to confuse pet owners. Most of them expect “Puppy Cuts” to be the same in any grooming business, and that is seriously wrong. In fact, there are many pet styles that share the same name, but not results. It’s even confusing for groomers.

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