Jointly reported by:
Tham Yuanyi Sr2A
Rosalind Chiang Fei Yang Sr3A
On the 9th of August 2021, a group of 30 pet lovers from Junior Middle 3 to Senior Middle 3 attended a talk about pet grooming, organised by Kuen Cheng High School’s Counselling Department as part of a series of Career Week talks. The attendees wanted to learn about pet grooming as a career and what it entails.
The speaker of the day was Pinny Law, an alumna of Kuen Cheng High School and an accomplished pet groomer, with 15 years of experience under her belt. She mentioned that she completed her training courses in foreign countries, such as Singapore, Thailand, Korea, and Hong Kong. She has also served as a pet grooming instructor for three years, and an accountant for six years.
After her self-introduction, Ms Law explained the responsibilities of a pet groomer. She said that pet groomers are like childcare workers, hair stylists, and dermatologists at the same time. This is because pet groomers handle a variety of pets, from dogs and cats to hamsters and birds, and it can be quite a handful. Besides beautifying pets to their owners’ desires, it is their duty to ensure that these pets are safe and clean throughout the grooming process. They must also guide the pets and calm them down if they become agitated. Pet grooming also involves a lot of cleaning; besides the fur-trim, many pets may come in dirty or disease-ridden, so it is the pet groomer’s job to clean them up as well.
Then, Ms Law laid out the requirements for a career in pet grooming. One who wishes to become a pet groomer must be extremely fond of animals, even if they are filthy or aggressive at first glance. A pet groomer must also be patient and persistent in their work. Many animals may feel distressed when put in unfamiliar environments, so it is important that pet groomers show forbearance and slowly earn the animals’ trust, instead of scolding them out of frustration. Furthermore, one must have completed a course in professional grooming, and possess a range of general knowledge on animals, such as being able to distinguish certain breeds and diseases. However, as Ms Law clarified, one does not need to pursue veterinary science in order to become a pet groomer. Lastly, creativity is also an important value a pet groomer must have.
After that, Ms Law talked about pet grooming as a career. She said that it is 100% service-oriented, and that an average pet groomer will receive at least RM2,500 or more in salary, however this amount often changes depending on the number of pets one grooms in a certain period of time. Pet grooming can be a gateway to creating one’s own business, as many pet groomers open their own grooming centres after attaining enough experience. Outside of grooming, these centres often also provide retail, accommodation, and daycare services. Other than this, one can also opt for becoming an instructor at a pet grooming academy, or specialist in other fields, such as animal training, animal breeding, and animal communication.
Besides being a pet groomer, she also had experience being a dog handler. Being a dog handler is to bring dogs for dog shows and competitions, and to exhibit the excellent characteristics of the dog breeds. Judges of the dog shows will judge dogs based on their size, weight, condition of fur and more as an index of how a perfect breed of a certain dog would look like. She mentioned that the profile of the dogs we see in pet shops are all judged based on the standards from dog shows.
Being a dog handler is not as easy as it seems in the eyes of the public. The handlers must have a great bond between their pets so that everything goes well during the dog shows. Dog handlers also have to take extra good care of their dogs, so as to maintain the quality of the dog’s fur. Hence, they have to brush and comb their dog’s fur frequently to maintain its smoothness. Dog handlers also need to acquire deep knowledge about the breeds of dogs, so that they can follow the criteria to take care of them.
After talking about her pet grooming career, she briefly talked about her life after secondary school. Apart from pet grooming courses, she also took many different courses both related and unrelated to pet grooming over the years, including creative pet grooming courses such as learning how to dye the fur of animals, and pet grooming instructor courses. She also founded pet grooming academies and pet grooming centres. Because of her strong personality and her love of taking challenges, she thought that she should not only limit herself to one expertise. Hence, she also pursued accounting courses such as CAT and ACCA and had spent a few years working full-time as an accountant.
Towards the end of the talk, she gave motivational advice to the listeners, saying that one must improve themselves constantly while young to explore their passions and find what they truly like. She mentioned that each obstacle and turning point in life is based on one’s own choices, so one should retain a good attitude in order to lead themselves to good whereabouts. There was also a Q&A session where she answered many students’ inquiries, such as how long grooming courses take and how the pet grooming industry has been affected under the pandemic. She mentioned that grooming courses take about six months to one year to complete, which is quite fast compared to normal degree courses. Regarding the pandemic’s impact towards the pet grooming industry, she said it has definitely affected because grooming centres aren’t allowed to open, but she also said not to worry because the customers one serves will always stick around.
After the fruitful session, group photos were taken and the talk came to a close. All the participants were happy to have gained a lot of knowledge about pet grooming from this event.
