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Lutherville Pet Groomer Takes It On the Road

Mom's Mobile Grooming comes to you to groom your pet outside your own home.

Meet Betsy Spicer. She’s a Lutherville resident who takes her work on the road.  As the owner of Mom’s Mobile Grooming, she drives her big, full-service van to you—and your pet.

Meet Betsy Spicer’s van. It’s loaded. It has its own generator, lights, three different heaters, water tanks, and an air conditioner for the summer. You don’t need to provide any kind of hook-ups at your house—not even a hose. The van contains all the tools of the pet-grooming trade, as well as the big stuff: a tub, a shower head, a grooming table, exhaust fans and a forced-cool-air dryer.

Using the dryer is one of Spicer’s favorite parts of dog grooming. Spicer practices a de-shedding treatment known as the FURminator, which she is trained and certified to administer. After a shampoo and a conditioning treatment, the air from the dryer floats the dog’s coat out. “When I’m de-shedding, the hair is just flying,” Spicer said. “At the end, I look like I’m in one of those cotton candy machines.”

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For the past four years, Spicer has groomed dogs and cats, filed their nails smooth with a rotary file, administered flea treatments and has even expressed anal glands. “I do what needs to be done,” she said practically.

But her experience has given her a wider knowledge base and some room for creativity. Spicer grew up on a small sheep farm in Cockeysville. On one occasion, when presented with a badly matted white dog who was going to be a challenge to groom, she relied on her past.

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“He looks like a sheep, so let’s sheer him like a sheep,” she reasoned. She started on the dog’s belly, sheep-shearing style, and went from there. “I got something like eight or nine feet long off of this dog,” she said. “Just like it was his wool.”

Spicer also uses a rubber horse curry comb to massage in the shampoo when bathing dogs, instead of a dog curry. “They’re sturdier and they’re more affordable,” said Spicer. “It’s no different.”

She’s a practical farm girl after all.

That’s not to say she doesn’t have some room in her practicality for a little frivolity, in the form of aromatherapy. Spicer uses lavender scents in her truck to infuse the air with a relaxing smell. “It’s not just for the dogs,” Spicer said. “It calms me. I stay calm and mellow, and then so do the dogs.”

Spicer, like many animal professionals, believes that a dog will react to the racing of a person’s heart, and become nervous or agitated when a person is upset.

“Your dog can hear your heart rate,” she said. “If I’m upset, then my heart races, and the dog hears it, because his hearing is 2,000 times better.”

Staying calm and going slowly are the hallmarks of a good groomer. Spicer never overbooks her clients, so she is never in a hurry. One of the things she dreads the most is a pet owner who wants a rush job.

“I don’t know if Fido is going to be in a good mood today,” Spicer said. “We might need to work a little bit on that.  I can always work with a dog that’s really bad if I have a little bit of time.”

One of Spicer’s special touches comes in the form of conditioner, after a shampoo. “I condition most all of my dogs that I do,” she said. “I believe in it, unless the dogs have a problem with it. I take the extra time, and I take the extra water, but it’s worth it.”

Dogs and cats might like Spicer’s gentle touch, but so does at least one human.  Spicer, a licensed cosmetologist, gives haircuts in her van to a local man in the landscaping business who doesn’t like to leave work. “He has employees that don’t work when he leaves the job site,” Spicer said. “So I bring a chair, and he watches them out the window of the van while he gets his hair cut. Besides this being absolutely hilarious,” laughed Spicer, “he gets his good hair cut, and his guys keep working.”

Want to pamper your pet?  You can reach Mom’s Mobile Grooming at 410-746-3077.

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