Spa days are generally considered to be relaxing, but when it’s a pet getting a much-needed bath or nail trim, the stress of a new space often makes the spa experience a stressful one for both the animal and its owner.
Bringing the salon to the pet can reduce a lot of those stressors, as W.F. West High School graduate Stevie Miller discovered over the last few months with the start of her mobile pet grooming business Northwest Paws & More.
Based in Grand Mound and servicing Lewis, Thurston, Grays Harbor and Mason counties, Northwest Paws & More offers nail trims for cats and full grooming service — including baths, haircuts, teeth brushings, anal gland expressions, ear cleanings and nail trims — to dogs of all sizes, ages 6 weeks and up.
The business began out of Miller’s desire to work for herself, which led her to purchase a mini bus on Easter Sunday in 2022 to renovate into a mobile pet salon.
Miller worked as a pet groomer at a brick-and-mortar pet salon at the time so she was familiar with the problems that come with grooming a pet in that environment. She also had experience grooming her own dogs at home, which carried its own set of problems.
“It’s a pain, it hurts your back and it clogs your … bathtub up and everything, and then they shake in your bathroom,” Miller said. “At that point, you’re not only washing your dog, you’re washing your whole house.”
A mobile salon where pets can be one-on-one with the groomer as close to home as possible without making a mess inside of the house was a good way to balance the benefits of salon and home grooming, Miller said.
“I thought it was a great idea and I just absolutely love it,” she said.
Those values became the motto of the business: “Lookin’ Fresh, With Less Stress, And No Mess.”
Once she bought the bus, Miller made a personal goal to finish renovations and open her business by the end of 2022.
“I did make that happen,” Miller said last week.
After taking all of the seats out of the bus, buying what she called “the biggest bathtub there was” and transforming the interior of the bus into an open-concept pet salon with the help of her fiance, Miller officially opened Northwest Paws & More in November.
The business has been successful enough so far that Miller was able to quit her day job and devote herself full-time to pet grooming on the go.
“I did not expect myself to get as busy as I am already,” Miller said, later adding, “It’s been fun and every day is a new adventure and I love it.”
As a mobile pet groomer, Miller drives the Northwest Paws & More minibus to a client’s home for their pet’s appointment rather than having the client take their pet to her.
“I can go to anybody’s house, even if they live in an apartment complex,” she said, so long as there’s a place nearby where she can park the minibus.
When she arrives at a home for a dog grooming appointment, Miller will go up to the door to greet the dog and owner before walking the dog over to the bus.
“Even if it’s a dog I’ve never groomed before, me and the owner (will be) talking to each other and the dog will just kind of make its way (over) and figure out the bus by itself,” Miller said. Once the dog is on the bus, Miller simply closes the door and gets to work.
With her repeat customers, Miller said, “a lot of the dogs that they’d be excited to see me and then they’d see the bus and they’re like ‘Oh, but this is grooming, I don’t really like the grooming bus.’”
More often than not, however, Miller has found dogs to be more cooperative with the grooming process on her bus than in the salon.
“From working in a salon, where you have all the different dogs and the smells and the kennels and the stress of all these different people — and then you go to my bus, it’s like the dogs are a whole other level of attitude,” Miller said.
The open concept design of the grooming station and the large windows of the bus help keep the dogs at ease while Miller is working, she said.
“I wanted it so that not only (can) owners look in and check on their pet anytime, but then the pet doesn’t feel claustrophobic,” Miller said.
However, the windows can pose their own problems — particularly when there are critters or other dogs outside.
“There’s some good things about mobile grooming and then there’s somethings that are like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even think about that,’” she said.
Tackling the business side of Northwest Paws & More has also been a learning process for Miller, who called starting a business from scratch “very chaotic and time consuming, but as you go along, you kind of figure out what works and what doesn’t.”
She is continuing to fine-tune her business practices as she goes, she said.
For more information and pricing, visit Northwest Paws & More’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/NWPawsandmore.
