About Pawprints

Immigrating from Germany in 1980, I came from a family of hairdressers. I was meant to cut hair and I knew it. What I didn't know is that one day I would be trimming and styling hair of K-9's! I have always been an animal lover and have lived with dogs all my life.

What inspired me to become a groomer was a rescue dog named Rags. He looked like a cross between a Bouvier and a Portuguese Water Dog or, like some people said, a black beardie. Rags was a stray that I picked up near a horse farm I boarded my horse at. He was a disaster when I first found him. Most of his ribs were showing thru his tangled coat with dollar size sores on his rump. It took us weeks with food lures to get him to even come close to us.

A year later, he was neutered and his coat and skin maintained by me. He loved his daily walks in a conservation park near our home and one day was covered in a blanket of green burdocks. On our way home from the park, people gave us funny looks since the dog in my vehicle was a green dog!! It took me hours of brushing and combing to completely rid Rags of all the burdocks. That was then when I decided to take him to a professional groomer for a trim. After speaking with the groomer about becoming a groomer, I took a professional groomer course, took my certificate to a vet and worked with a veterinarian as an assistant and groomer for about a year. I was excited about starting my own business and opened Pawprints Dog Salon in August of 1991, in Pickering , Ontario.