Pet Grooming and Boarding Editing and Proofreading Services

A matted spaniel arrives for a groom. The mats are tight to the skin, the owner wants the coat kept long, and the honest answer is that this dog has to be clipped short — that brushing it out would take four hours and hurt, and that under those mats there may be sores nobody has seen. That conversation has to happen before the clippers, and it has to be recorded, because the dog will go home looking like a different animal.

We edit what groomers, kennels and catteries produce — intake and consent records for grooming, matted coat and clip-off consent documentation, temperament, health and medication records, boarding intake and emergency authority documentation, vaccination and flea treatment requirements, feeding, routine and settling information, incident and injury communications to owners, terms of business, deposits and cancellation, collection, late collection and abandonment terms, and owner guidance on preparing a pet for a stay. Our editors work on the consent taken before the clippers start.

The intake record and its consent is where grooming and boarding businesses either protect an animal and themselves or improvise, and its failure is a booking form with a breed on it. The two things that matter are what state the animal is in and what the owner has authorised. We write these so the coat's condition is recorded specifically, with where the mats are, how tight, and what the realistic options are — brush out with its time and cost, or clip with the length that is actually achievable — since an owner who agrees to "a trim" and receives a short clip has not consented to anything; so the possibility of finding sores, wounds or parasites under a matted coat is stated before work starts, given that these are found regularly and an owner told afterwards assumes they were caused; so the temperament information is recorded from the owner in specific terms — what the animal does when its feet are handled, whether it has bitten, what it is frightened of — because a groomer who knows is a groomer who does not get bitten; so the veterinary authority for boarding is recorded with a limit, a named practice and who decides if the owner cannot be reached, as this is the one document nobody wants to need; so the medication is recorded as a dose and a time rather than a description; so the collection terms including late collection are stated; and so photographs are taken at intake for anything matted, injured or elderly. Records taken this way protect the animal, the owner and the business.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including records, terms and owner correspondence. We are editors rather than groomers, veterinary or animal welfare advisers, and we offer no view on grooming, boarding or animal care. What we can do is get the consent taken before the clippers rather than explained afterwards.