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Loving Pets Grooming Shop Review

We finally got the courage to bring our beloved Amber to a new grooming shop, which was called Loving Pets. We stumbled onto this shop while browsing an online pet forum called Petschannel, and saw a lot of good reviews, our motive was to find a good groomer that is near to where we stay.

After browsing through the reviews, we went to their website for a look. The website was not only badly designed, it was also empty, there seemed no purpose other than to tell people their address, no operating hours, no information on charges either, pretty horrible. We emailed them and there was no reply even after 3 working days so I called them up, I asked about their rates and whether they had received my email. The lady receiving the call then explained that it was because their email system was down and they were still revamping their website, we thought it was fair enough and since they had ensured that they practiced open concept grooming, we went ahead and booked a slot with them. Through the phone we also found out that they do spa services, which was reasonably priced at $70 if we were to book it with full grooming, although it sounded tempting, we wanted to try the standard grooming first before considering other options in future.

cosy looking little shop

The place was easy to access, on east coast road, both bus and car can access this place easily especially if you live in the east. Near the bus stop was another grooming shop called Wizard of Paws, east coast road seemed famous for pet stores as the area had lots of private estates nearby, where the well to do family can groom their dogs without having to travel far. Loving Pets was about 2 blocks beside mount pleasant vet, I still have goosebumps thinking about this vet clinic after hearing countless horror stories about the service there. Back to the review, the entrance of Loving Pets looked pretty typical and standard, we opened the glass door and proceeded in. The first word that I can think of when entering the shop was, "dusty". A lady came over and guided us to the back of the store, where a small room was used to groom dogs.


Amber got scared by the barks

mr. guarding schnauzer

They did not have stacked cages like most grooming shops but instead used play pens, which in our opinion was not very efficient for a grooming shop to do that. Not only they would waste a lot of space by using play pens, it would also trigger barks and whines more easily as the dogs can easily see who is coming in and what is happening around them. Right when the groomer opened the door, dogs barked like crazy, it was expected and we backed off a few steps so they couldn't see us. Amber was so afraid she whined and tried to paw her way out of the play pen, we showed her the "stay" sign from far away, she laid down and kept looking at us with puppy eyes.


We can see that Loving Pets lacked staffs, only 2 groomers inside the room and there were plenty of dogs on that day, about 6 during our time of visit. The groomers did not split work, but each handled the dogs all the way from bathing to drying, shaving and finally styling, it was like an all in one groomer, and they looked really tired. The lady who's name was Serene attended to us, we spoke to her about our criteria and even showed her a picture of our idea cut, she just glimpsed at the photo, talk to us about other parts of the styling and said okay.

While waiting we browsed through the products in the store, they had really extensive range of products but the problem was that they were all very dusty! We had to wipe our hands on tissue papers whenever an item was picked up, I cannot imagine when was the last time they had cleaned their shop. Outside was a lady at the reception, we believed she was in charge of enquiries on booking and also products inside the store, she attended to all the customers closely and tried to mingle with them to build relationship. The whole store looked pretty run down and dusty, even the grooming area was like this, stains everywhere, metal rusting, paint wearing off and even talismans pasted everywhere, it was kinda like a haunted room if not for the dog's presence!



We couldn't actually see the bathing area, but they washed Amber up pretty quick. However since the drying and styling was at the grooming table, which we could see clearly, it was still okay for us. Amber was staring at us during the whole grooming process, she was yelping more than usual and we noted down the area she was touched during the times that she whined. Amber is not a dog that whine without reason, sure she sometimes want more attention thus the whiny behavior, but this is the first time we had found her so uncomfortable during grooming. Once her body was styled, the groomer proceeded to her face area, she got a bit uneasy as Amber was staring at us, she came out of the grooming room and spoke to us to see if we could leave for awhile until she finish Amber's face. She was afraid that Amber's constant moving head would affect her concentration, that our presence there might have caused Amber to move her head more than usual, we understood and left the shop for a while.

We took this chance and visited Wizard of Paws while waiting, it was cleaner but not any better in terms of overall experience. After about 15 minutes, Amber was done with grooming, the whole process took about 2 hours and we felt they were pretty slow. The lady brought Amber out, she looked clean but the cut did not at all resembled the photo we provided, we understood that the amount and quality of hair matters when styling, that each individual dogs would look different even with the same haircut, but the directions was wrong! We did not ask for a straight cut on the fringe but the groomer did it on her own accord, we were not contented but not unhappy either. The important thing was that Amber had to be clear from any injuries or ticks, I placed her on the chair and checked for ticks thoroughly, the groomer had not expected us to check on Amber, she was already at the cashier thinking we would have made the payment but looked a tad bit surprised when she saw me flipping through Amber's body. I touched around and there were no ticks, but found a small portion of tangled hair at the back of her ears, I told the groomer and she quickly offered to bring Amber in to trim the excess hair off.

Overall, Loving Pets is a typical pet grooming shop that is not too bad but not that good either. We had set our expectations higher because of the positive reviews, Loving Pets had wide variety of products and good customer services but they had brought our impression down with their dusty shop and products, everything was in a bad condition. Grooming wise it could be better if they revamped the room to make it cleaner, using stacked cages for grooming is the best in this scenario. Hearing dogs barking non stop not only irritates customers, it also scares the other dogs that are waiting for their turn to be groomed. The groomers also looked very tired, Loving Pets should consider hiring more staffs, skill wise it was fine, not too shabby!

We will come back if we cannot find any better groomer for Amber in the east area, otherwise we don't think we will want to try Loving Pets again, let alone the spa services. Unless, they can find a way to renovate the whole place, including the website of course.

Full grooming for Amber cost $45.

Product range:
*****
Service:
***
Price:
***
Location:
****
Hygiene:
*
Skills:
***

Overall: 6/10

How scoring works:
Lowest * Highest *****
Product range: The range of products available.
Service: Customer service, how well they know their products, how friendly are they, are they pushy in sales? Are they gentle to our dogs?
Price: Affordability based on the brand and quality, also taking account to other similar quality products.
Location: The area the store is located, whether it is near to bus stops, MRT, whether it is located inside a shopping mall or hard to find places.
Hygiene: Cleanliness of shop, grooming area. Does the management disinfect the place? Is it Dusty?
Skills: Skills of groomers, how well they follow instructions, how skilled they are in styling.

Overall Score for shops:

Average total calculated from all the criteria involved.
1-2 = Bad, will only visit after 6 months to see if theres any improvement
3-4 = Below Average, but not hopeless
5-6 = Neutral, can be better
7-8 = Great, to be taken note of
9-10 = Outstanding! Worthy of ***** on our review list

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