Sarah Whitfield

My story

Why Pawsh exists.

In 2018, my senior dog Murphy had a panic attack at a busy salon. He was 12, a little stiff in the hips, mostly deaf, and had been a salon-groomed dog his whole life. That afternoon something — the dryers, the other dogs barking, the fluorescent lights, all of it — caught up with him. He shook for two days. He stopped eating. The next month, when it was time for another groom, he saw me pick up his leash and hid under the bed.

I sat on the floor next to the bed and decided that wasn't going to be how it ended.

I had spent fifteen years in marketing in Charlotte before that. Murphy and I had moved here from outside Asheville in 2010. By the end of 2018 I was deep in the National Dog Groomers Association apprenticeship in Greenville, then Fear Free certification while my husband and I figured out how a 22-foot van could fit in a Plaza Midwood driveway. Pawsh's first groom — a Cavalier named Pemberton, in a driveway off Central Avenue — was in March 2019.

That was six years and around five thousand grooms ago.

What I believe about grooming.

The thing I learned grooming Murphy at home, and then taking the apprenticeship, and then watching the dogs who walked back into our van for the second and third and tenth visit, is that calm is a skill. It's not personality, it's not breed, it's not luck. It's the by-product of how the environment is set up and how the human moves through it. A dog who's lost his mind at a busy salon will often be fine in a quiet van in his own driveway, with one person, no other dogs, and no waiting.

That's the whole pitch. The van is the proof.

One pup at a time. Never. Caged.

Every groom is sixty to ninety minutes of one-on-one. I never have a second dog in the van. I never have a dog in a cage between steps. If your dog needs ten minutes of just sitting on a towel watching me through the window before we start, that's part of the appointment — not a problem with the appointment. (Ask Ashley R. about her rescue Bandit. He took twelve minutes the first visit. By his fourth he walked into the van on his own.)

What I see most, after five thousand grooms.

The three things I get most-asked about, and what I tell every new Pawsh client:

1. Matting starts behind the ears and in the armpits. Not the back — that's the part owners brush. If you only have time to brush one area between grooms, do those two. (More on this in the first-timer guide.)
2. Doodles aren't one coat type. Wavy doodles are a different brush schedule from curly doodles. If you've ever been told "doodles mat — it's just how it is," that's not quite right. (Full breakdown in the doodle coat guide.)
3. Senior dogs don't need shorter grooms — they need slower ones. Frequent breaks, hydraulic table, no overhead dryer. The total time can be longer than a young dog's; the work intensity is lower. (See the senior dog guide.)

What's next.

I'm not trying to scale Pawsh into a fleet. I want to groom Charlotte's dogs for the next ten years and I want every one of them to know my van and not be afraid of it. If you're reading this thinking about Pawsh because your dog hates the groomer, I'm probably your person.

If you want to book, the calendar's right here. If you want to ask first, my number is (571) 739-5771 and I answer between grooms.

— Sarah