13/04/2026
DREAMS DO COME TRUE - IF YOU KEEP GOING LONG ENOUGH. ✨
This picture is from February 2008, when I opened my first ever dog grooming salon.
It was tiny but mighty.
I had been volunteering since before I finished school, then later working for the late Hilary Ross at her Veterinary Practice. Hilary & Ken said I ‘had a way with dogs’, and that I should consider dog grooming. They were usually right, so I listened!
Off I went to Kirkley Hall College and did my City & Guilds level 2 & 3 in dog grooming.
Hilary and Ken helped me find my first premesis & i took over a small client base from a lovely lady they knew.
🥺Sometimes things are just meant to be and the universe has impeccable timing.
My plan was to build up a part time grooming business and help my dad on the farm the rest of the time, and one day in the future I would have my boarding kennels.
Little did I know that I would be so busy!
After a year, we took moved into a bigger premises on the industrial unit and took on staff. My friend built me a retail area and an office. It felt huge!
I built a name for grooming the dogs no one else could handle, and doing it with kindness and patience.
By 2011, we purchased an even bigger premises 🤯 which wouldn’t have been possible without my parents support and being a guarantor for the loan!
That premises involved taking over the stock and staff from the old ‘Rainbow pets’ shop in Prudhoe, and building in a grooming salon for 3 groomers.
From then we took on apprentices, trained groomers, did delivery’s, built relationships in a wonderful community led pet shop in Prudhoe, all with the help of our great staff including Audrey Story who was there from day 1 til I sold the shop. She remembered everyone’s orders and special days, always ready to get on with the day, and was always good fun to work with. The groomers I worked with were incredible and I would have any of them back now. I was very lucky to have such great staff across the board.
In 2014 I started a family and decided I wanted to take a step back. I had another business too so I decided to sell this business and I went back to a small scale grooming.
My grooming set up from 2015 was in a Portacabin (which used to be part of the Vets that I worked for, so that they were again helping me!).
That Portacabin kept my dog grooming business going while I raised my young children. I groomed in school hours and one weekend a month.
All the while I still wanted to have my Kennels one day, I still felt that there was room for something better, that it was time for something better, that the Dog Boarding industry needed to improve drastically, for the dogs!
Then the kids were finally old enough for me to start thinking about it, so we started with the whole planning fiasco.
That took a while to say the least. 3 years from the start. A lot of ideas. Scraps of paper, whiteboards, cutting things out, measuring things out in the garden, a ton of tears, a ton of money, rejection, hoops to jump through, a lot of stress, and a lot of ‘should we quit’ ‘we can’t afford to keep going’.
But we did.
December 2024 my dream was complete and we opened the doors as you see it today.
The old portacabin is now used as a play space and scent school for the dogs that stay over.
The new building has a groomers in it too.
This is the dream that I drew when I was 15.
This is the dream I was thinking about when I was 20 and learning how to groom dogs.
This is the dream that kept me going when I was in my overdraft.
If 2007 me could see 2026 me now she just wouldn’t believe it.
I’ve been lucky enough to have incredible support from family and friends over the years.
But ultimately, I worked hard, I kept the dream in my heart and never stopped dreaming about it.
There’s a lot more to this whole story, a lot of pain, trauma, stress, issues, health problems, as people do. I could write a book 🤣 Life happens. It wasn’t plain sailing. But we keep going, we keep moving forward.
So if you have a dream, keep dreaming and keep going.
PS. The work mobile number is the same 18 years later!! 👌📲
