41 Church Street, Malvern WR14 2AA
Tuesday to Saturday, by appointment. We book about two weeks ahead.
Book on WhatsAppNo cages. No dryer roaring away in the corner. No queue of dogs waiting their turn. Your dog has the room, the bath and the whole appointment to itself — and goes home as soon as it is finished.
Nowhere to put a second dog, because there is never a second dog in the building.
The dryer goes on when we are drying, on the lowest setting that works, and off again straight after.
Nothing to bark at, nothing to guard, nothing to be frightened of through a door.
One bath, one table, one pair of hands and one dog. Appointments are spaced so that nobody arrives while your dog is still here, and so a dog that needs to stop for five minutes can stop for five minutes.
If that sounds slow, it is. It is also why dogs who have had a bad time elsewhere tend to settle here.
How the day is builtSize first, then coat. Here is what the work is for each kind of dog, and the figure a full groom starts at.
£40
Bath, dry, clip or scissor, nails and ears — the whole dog, finished in one appointment.
Yorkshire terrier, shih tzu, dachshund, bichon
Cocker spaniel, schnauzer, border collie, small doodle
Labradoodle, retriever, german shepherd, old english
Fox, border, lakeland and welsh terriers, schnauzers
You get the price before you book, not after the groom. What it comes to depends on the size of the dog, the length and state of the coat, and how long it has been since the last groom. Send a photo on WhatsApp and we will tell you the figure for your dog, and how long it will take.
Most of the stress in a grooming salon is not the bath or the brush. It is the noise, the other dogs, and the hours in a cage between the wash and the trim. Take those away and most dogs are fine.
For nervous and older dogsThree coats we see every week, what arrives, and what walks back out of the door.
Curly coat, grown out
Felted behind the ears and under the harness, tight to the skin in the armpits, and no brush has reached the undercoat in a while.
Shorter than most owners expect, because matting comes off, it does not get dragged out. Even all over, comfortable, and easy to keep brushed until the next one.
Collie, husky, retriever
Dropping handfuls on the floor, dead undercoat packed in at the hips and behind the ears, and a coat that looks flat instead of standing off.
Bathed, blown through and raked out, with the top coat left exactly as long as it was. Shedding drops for weeks. Nothing is clipped off a double coat here.
Hand stripping
Jacket gone soft and woolly, colour faded towards grey, the hard top coat ready to come away at a pull.
Stripped by hand, tight and harsh to the touch, with the colour back. A terrier that looks like a terrier rather than a clipped version of one.
The photographs live on WhatsApp. We take a before and an after for most dogs and send them to their owner the same day. Ask us for the last fortnight's and we will send the album across — it is the fairest way to see what we do with a coat like yours.
Dogs who have had a bad time somewhere else, dogs who cannot stand for long, dogs who need the clippers to stop every few minutes. We change the appointment to fit the dog, not the other way round.
A short, gentle first visit with no clippers and no pressure, so that grooming is a normal thing from the start.
WhatsApp is the quickest way to reach us — we answer between dogs, and we can tell you the price and the length of the appointment from a photograph of the coat.
The Malvern Mutt Parlour
41 Church Street, Malvern WR14 2AA
Tuesday to Saturday, by appointment. The book runs about two weeks ahead, so plan a little before the coat needs it.