Pet grooming & boarding

1. Create the pet record before the first appointment: species, breed, age, weight, spay or neuter status, known health conditions, medications, allergies, and the owner's veterinarian with a phone number.
2. Require proof of current rabies vaccination, and whatever else your municipality or your own policy requires, with the expiry date entered as a date — not as a note.
3. Take a written behaviour history: bite history, reaction to handling of feet, ears and nails, separation anxiety, resource guarding, and how they are with other animals.
4. Have the owner sign the service agreement: what you will do, your right to stop a groom that is unsafe, your right to obtain emergency veterinary treatment at the owner's expense, who to call, and your policy on matted coats.
5. Record emergency authority explicitly — the dollar limit the owner pre-authorises for emergency veterinary care, and a second contact if they cannot be reached.
6. For boarding, do a meet-and-greet before the first overnight stay. The animals that cannot cope are identified in twenty minutes and otherwise are discovered at 2am.

1. Assess and photograph the coat and the animal's condition at check-in, with the owner present. Note existing matting, lumps, skin conditions, ear state, nail length and any injury.
2. On a matted coat, explain that dematting a severely matted animal can be painful and harmful and that clipping short may be the humane option — and get that choice in writing before starting. Shave-down disputes are the most common complaint in grooming, and this single step prevents nearly all of them.
3. Never leave an animal unattended on a table or in a tub, restrained or not. This is the cause of the trade's worst injuries.
4. Keep heated drying under constant supervision at a temperature you have verified, and never use a heated cage dryer unattended.
5. Photograph the finished groom and record what was actually done, including anything you declined to do and why.
6. Check the animal out to the owner in person, pointing out anything you found. Finding it first is what makes it information rather than an accusation.

1. Run to a written daily routine: feeding to each animal's own schedule and food, water checked and refreshed by name, medications given and initialled, exercise and toileting logged, and a visual welfare check each round.
2. Keep a capacity limit you do not exceed, set by your space, your staffing ratio and your licence — not by demand. Over-capacity is how a good kennel becomes a bad one in a single long weekend.
3. Group play only by temperament and size, supervised by someone who is watching the dogs rather than a phone, with written criteria for who may be in a group at all.
4. Do a documented shift handover: every animal's state, what changed, what to watch, what medication is next and when.
5. Isolate any animal showing signs of illness immediately, notify the owner, and contact their veterinarian with the owner's authority. Record the time of each step.
6. Walk the whole facility at the end of each shift: latches, gates, double-door containment, temperature, water. Escapes almost always trace to a latch nobody checked.

1. Care for the animal first: stabilise, and get it to a veterinarian if there is any doubt. Nothing in the record matters more than the animal, and a delay for the paperwork is indefensible.
2. Call the owner yourself, early, and tell them what happened plainly. The cases that become claims are almost always the ones where the owner learned late or learned from someone else.
3. Write the incident report the same day: time, who was present, what happened, what was done, which veterinarian, what it cost, and what you will change. Photograph.
4. Report a dog bite to a person to the authority your municipality requires, within the time it requires.
5. Notify your insurer in line with the policy's reporting condition — late notice is a common reason cover is contested.
6. Review the incident at the next team meeting and change the procedure, if it needs changing. A pattern of identical incidents is the thing that makes a claim indefensible.

1. Clean before disinfecting. A disinfectant applied to organic soil does little, and this is the single most common error in facility cleaning.
2. Use a disinfectant registered for the purpose in your country, at the label dilution, with the label's contact time — the contact time is the part people skip, and without it the product has not worked.
3. Keep the colour-coded separation between kennel areas, food preparation and grooming, so cloths and mops do not move between them.
4. Log the daily routine: runs, floors, tubs, tables, clippers and blades, bowls, bedding, and the vehicles if you transport animals.
5. Disinfect clippers and blades between animals, and keep a separate set for any animal with a skin condition.
6. Have a written outbreak plan: what you close, who you call, what you tell the owners whose animals were present, and when you reopen.

1. Rebook at check-out, in person, for the next groom. A grooming business lives on the standing six- or eight-week appointment, and the moment to make it is while the owner is admiring the result.
2. Take a deposit or hold a card for first-time and holiday bookings, with the cancellation policy stated in writing at booking.
3. Send a reminder 48 hours ahead and a confirmation the day before — this alone removes most of the no-shows.
4. Charge the no-show fee you published, consistently. An unenforced policy is not a policy, and the inconsistency is what customers resent.
5. Watch the holiday peaks: boarding revenue concentrates into a handful of weeks, so take deposits earlier and staff them earlier than feels necessary.
6. Track lapsed clients — anyone whose standing appointment stopped — and phone them. It is the cheapest marketing in the trade.

Licences and registrations

• Municipal business licence, and a kennel or animal-care licence where required — The municipality
  This is the binding licence in most of Canada, and it carries the conditions: animal numbers, hours, noise, outdoor runs, waste handling and inspection. Confirm zoning at the specific address before committing to it.
  1
• Compliance with provincial animal welfare legislation — The province — in British Columbia the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, enforced by the BC SPCA's authorised agents; in Ontario the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act, 2019
  Not a licence but a standing legal duty on anyone responsible for an animal, with powers of entry, seizure and prosecution behind it. The duty is to prevent distress, which is defined broadly and includes deprivation of food, water, shelter or veterinary treatment.
  3
• The veterinary boundary — Provincial veterinary regulators
  Diagnosis, prescription, treatment and procedures are restricted to veterinarians. Expressing anal glands, removing mats from damaged skin, giving medication beyond an owner's written instruction, and offering advice that sounds like a diagnosis are the places this line gets crossed in grooming. Stay on your side of it.
  7
• Employment and payroll registration — Federal and provincial
  Payroll account, workers' compensation registration, and employment standards compliance for a workforce that is often young and part time — which is exactly the workforce employment standards complaints come from.
  11
• Waste and wastewater conditions — The municipality
  Grooming wastewater, hair and animal waste are frequently addressed in the facility's licence or in the sewer-use bylaw. Ask before you plumb the tubs.
  1

Insurance

• Animal bailee — care, custody and control — The defining cover for this trade and the one a general liability policy excludes: liability for injury to, death of, or loss of an animal in your care. Without it, the one incident that matters is uninsured.12
• Commercial general liability with a dog-bite and third-party injury limit you have confirmed — Covers injury to people and damage to property. Confirm specifically that bite injuries to third parties and to staff are addressed and at what limit — exclusions are common.12
• Professional liability for the grooming service itself — Answers for a claim that the service was performed badly — a clipper burn, a nick, a shave-down dispute — which is not property damage and not bodily injury to a person.12
• Property, contents and business interruption — An outbreak or a flood closes a facility, and the fixed costs continue. Interruption cover is what carries the payroll through a forced closure.12
• Workers' compensation coverage — Mandatory for employees. This trade has a high rate of bites, scratches and lifting injuries, and the claims experience is what prices the premium.11