Stone Mountain Pet Lodge Develops Dog Groomer Training Program
There comes a point when every dog needs a haircut. And on any given day, dozens of pet owners take their furry friends to Stone Mountain Pet Lodge in Brooklyn Park to become… less furry.
“A dog about this size normally takes me like an hour and a half to two hours,” said Shayla Wright, a pet stylist. “Depends on the dog, though.”
Wright has been a dog groomer here for the last two and a half years, but this wasn’t the original job for which she applied.
“I started bathing [pets], and then after I started bathing, I was like ‘oh, an opportunity came up to learn how to do haircuts,’ and I thought, you know why not,” Wright said.
Wright — and most of her other pet-styling colleagues — took advantage of a program where employees of Stone Mountain could learn how to become dog groomers within the walls of this Brooklyn Park pet care center.
“We’ve probably trained at least a dozen of our staff to become professional groomers,” said Maggie Larson, who owns Stone Mountain Pet Lodge with her husband, Dave.
Shayla Wright grooms a dog at Stone Mountain Pet Lodge in Brooklyn Park.
Larson says she launched this program because it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find groomers.
“There’s not very many places right now where people can learn to groom a dog, learn the art of grooming a dog,” she said.
Fewer schools mean fewer people in the talent pipeline. So instead of looking elsewhere, she hired someone who can train current employees who have expressed an interest in the trade.
“Meaning that they’ve already gone through and become accomplished bathers, and the next step is pretty logical that they would become a dog groomer,” said Larson, who went through the program herself in 2020.
The entire program takes about three months, using curriculum through the American Grooming Academy.
Once the groomers-in-training finish, they not only end up with a new skill-set, but a fun career.
“Yeah, I think it’s just a very fun job,” said Wright. “If you like being creative. You can kind of use it as your outlet to be creative, and you get to hang out with dogs all day.”
Related: Pet Grooming Business Finds Growth During COVID-19, ‘Everybody Got a Dog During the Pandemic’
