27/11/2025
What a difference a month makes!
Meet Charlie, a sweet young Cockerpoo who has never enjoyed grooming, especially his head, but he had made progress with a groomer but unfortunately she went on mat leave and the other groomers in the salon were unable to groom him.
Charlie and his guardians have done work with which is how they found me... so I knew that his guardian was behaviour savvy and his emotional welfare was the priority.
Charlie is very nervous of new things. Our meet and greet went well but when he was left for our first groom he became very worried and growled at me when I approached him. I backed straight off, abandoned the idea of getting him in the bath and just worked on feeding him and building his confidence on the floor.
He was overdue grooming so really needed a clip off and once he relaxed and realised I wasn't going to force him to do anything he let me clip off his coat. A huge win!!
6 weeks later he came again and rushed to get in the groom room which told me I had made the right decisions for him and he was happy to be there.
I spent about half an hour getting his confidence climbing the stairs into the bath which was terrifying for him to start with. He finally got into the bath by himself and allowed me to bath him! We did drying on the floor initially to build his confidence again and finished on the table where he allowed me to help him up and do some brushing and fluffing. We did some counter conditioning on his face and head and trimmed his feet and legs.
Charlie is a superstar and just needed listening to and some confidence building and yummy food, to achieve what we did! Breaking up his groom so we could work on all the different elements, helped him to feel comfortable! 🖤🐾
