GroomPod 462 transcript

GroomPod 462 Grooming disasters, Funky poodle review wrap up, and an update on Chris Christenses - October 31, 2025

00:00:00 Speaker: Hello, groomers. You found the groom pod. Welcome to our virtual salon. My name is Suzy and I'm your host. I'm a mobile groomer from Seattle, Washington, and anybody who knows me will tell you I love to talk, especially about my job. And one of my favorite people to talk to is my friend and mentor and the co-star of the show, the curator of ingredients, Miss Barbara Bird. Hey, Suzy. So good to hear you and be here today. What's up? Oh, it's an exciting day here at the Groom Pod in blustery Snohomish County. Welcome to episode four hundred sixty two. Wow. Every time I say, it just amazes me. Welcome to episode four hundred and sixty two of the Groom Pod. Recorded on October nineteenth, twenty twenty five, in Snohomish, Washington and Greenville, South Carolina. This podcast is brought to you by our kind sponsors. Best shot show season precision sharp grew more and stashko. And if you guys would like to tip your podcasters, you can do so at our website. Com and you can use the donation button to donate straight to Barbara and help her buy products to test. Or you can join us on Patreon and support the show in a larger way. This week on the Groom Pod, we're going to talk about grooming disasters. We're going to update you on our funky poodle products and the good, the bad, and the ugly of Chris Christensen. This week, what's new is brought to you by Groomer Software. If you haven't found groomer, you're missing out. Groomer is an all in one software solution for grooming business. Whether you are a solo mobile groomer or manage several shops, groomer has everything you need twenty four hour online booking and forms routing, credit card processing, reminders, Google Calendar and QuickBooks integration and so much more. And the best customer service anywhere. Shop. Mobile or house call. Groomer has you covered and they're giving us a free month. Just enter Groom Pod twenty two in the coupon code, and they've started to roll out a few upgrades to the software, which is exciting because it's been kind of stagnant for a little while when they were going through their little reorganization. But new things are happening and take a look at it. I really enjoy my groomer software and I can't imagine life without it. So I posted a couple blogs that you put up that I finally got to do. You know, the website is of course a challenge for me as always, but I put up an old blog post of yours about Bobby Painter shampoo. Is it painter? Painter? Oh, good. Yeah. Painter. Yeah. Sorry if I butchered that. And, uh, you went through the ingredients and gave it a bird's eye look, and it's an interesting read. It's done a while ago, but it's still pertinent. And then I also put up the side by side comparison of Autobahn and kennel fresh from show season. So there's a nice chart. It was a challenge for me to get the chart up. I couldn't just copy and paste the chart. All it got was words, so I had to. Do you have to build a new chart? No, I thought about doing that and then I thought, wait a minute, I can take a screenshot of the chart on my phone, then transfer it over to my Google account where I can open it from my laptop and load it onto the web page. And that's what I did. And it worked. It's a little wonky, but it's fine. Great problem solving. Thank you. Well, thanks for posting those things and I'll keep as I find them. I'll send you some more and we'll kind of keep after that. Sounds good. Did you happen to see The post from Michele Evans about NDAA, AKC cancelling the certification that was supposed to be happening this weekend in Portland. No, I didn't, so tell me about it. Well, I called Michele this morning and I got her permission to read this, so I'm just going to read you what she posted. I think she might have even been, uh, doing the judging. Maybe her wife was hosting the certification. Something like that. Anyway. She titled it Groomers Left Broken by AKC. And after ten months of preparation, my team, my wife Aaron Fogg, staff and over twenty five attendees from across Oregon and Washington were ready for the AKC Ngat Certification Workshop twenty five. Yes, they had twenty five groomers who were preparing for certification on that day. Oh my God. And the workshop and exam this weekend, October eighteenth and nineteenth. We invested countless hours grooming, studying, holding practice exams and coordinating logistics. Our groomers worked at discounted rates to help clients and breeders maintain rigorous coat schedules and grow extra coat as needed for testing. The financial cost alone around six thousand dollars between the two salons. Then, just five days after AKC and GA confirmed testing would proceed on the twenty fourth of September, our exam was abruptly canceled. No explanation, no support. Just months of hard work and financial investment lost. Many groomers were working towards certified master groomer titles, and some had already completed portions of the exams. Now they're left abandoned, unsupported and disheartened. Our local grooming community deserves better. We believe in investing in education, professionalism and growth. And instead we were left asking, where do we go from here? This isn't just disappointment in an organization that I was once dedicated to. It's a call for accountability from AKC and GA to the grooming community. It would have been so bummed. Oh me too. That's just sounds like a giant clusterfuck. Yeah, I'm not sure what happened, but it should have been handled differently somehow. Just not even say what? Sorry. You know, to just say, uh, we're not doing it canceled. That's screwed up. And that's cruel. It's actually cruel. It's punitive. It's. And they took their money and that's fraudulent. You know, that's that's really bad. I hate to say it, but I think it is what people were afraid of when they heard AKC was stepping in. And now it's come to fruition. Yeah, it just seems like they're using us for money and don't have a real investment in groomers. And I suspect that they're holding on to old stereotypes of groomers as kind of dumb girls that don't know jack shit about breeds. To me, it feels like social class discrimination. It's like they put us in a lower class of human beings so we don't deserve as much. I mean, they wouldn't do that to their rich millionaire contributors, would they? No, they sure wouldn't. You know, like. But who are we? We're nothing. So, You know, screw us. Well, that really pisses me off. I, I think that, you know, like, search your client files and find a lawyer that does that kind of lawyer work in your clients because they may think that groomers don't have any leverage, but they don't know the wrath of fucked over pet owners. Yeah, yeah. You know, the fact that you've got to grow out coat for so long to do these certifications and you got to maintain usually your own dog or someone else's dog in a much longer haircut for a discounted rate for months. Preparing for this and the cost of testing and the time is just really disappointing. It's so deflating. I just can't imagine how those groomers felt how exciting to get twenty five groomers for certification. I know that's that. That's a huge event. That's a huge event of that nature. I mean, I think that we had in my certification was like maybe six or seven people at the most. And I, I took me months to get those people committed. Yeah. And that's it's just rotten to the core. And I think that AKC doesn't have the infrastructure to support the endeavor, the, the certification process, um, that we had with Ndg, uh, they just don't have that set up. Right. It's never been right. Um, there's just been issue after issue after issue You, and I would recommend that groomers not start certification with AKC Nagar. Do I? Yeah. Do something else. Go somewhere else. The only thing that's not lost is those skills that you gained from all of that work and being criticized and oh, I mean and learning under Michelle Evans, you were just blessed. Yes. To have the best. And you did develop relationship with special clients about using their dogs for grooming things. And that's not lost. Those skills are with you forever, whether you got a certificate for them or not. Hopefully you can generate some kind of a group action to hold them accountable for this. Uh, not even supporting. Not even saying they're sorry. Not even providing some support or where we go from here. Just dropping it like that. That's just so insulting. It is as well as disappointing. You know, it's just really insulting to be treated like that. Oh, I'm. Yeah, sure. We knew that it was going to be risky. And I guess the alternative would have been Ngat just disappeared into nothing, which might have been the better solution, I don't know. This isn't working now. Helen Schafer did put a post up under one of the places that Michelle posted her post about a new person coming in, or something like that and reorganizing, but still, it doesn't really excuse the backing out. You know, less than a month before the testing. But twenty five groomers? It's not like it was a four groomer event, right? Twenty five groomers. That's a big miss. So if you guys if anybody was out there and was affected by this, we at the groom bot here feel horrible for you. That's just a fact. We just feel horrible for you, and we hope that you can find a way to continue your journey of certification. But like Barbara was saying, you still got the skills. The skills are there. So you take those with you. Let's review our feelings about Funky Poodle and wrap that up. I am grabbing for that shampoo all the time. I really like it. I like the way it cleans. I'm enjoying it tremendously. I also like the conditioner through the recirculating bathing system. Works fantastic. I'm liking that, although I will often throw a little best shot the max in there because that's just the way I am. Wanted a little slipperier, but I do like the products. Now let's talk about some of the peripheral products. Let's specifically talk about the hair oil. There's there's secret hair oil. Okay. Well, it's not a secret. Well, what does it say on the bottle? It says something on the bottle. Secret sauce. Oh. Secret sauce. Okay. I knew there was some secret in there somewhere. So I used it on my own hair first. And the thing that I noticed was three days later, I could still smell like Fruity Pebbles cereal. So. But it's kind of a it was interesting. It made the bottom of my hair where I used it, because that's where my split ends are most prevalent, other than up here on my head. I used it on my hands. I rubbed it into my hands, and then I rubbed it on the end of my ponytail. And it did feel a little greasy for a while. Uh, it feels nice now, but it's a little bit, you know, days later. But I always try to find a use for it if I can't use it in my trailer. It goes to the barn. So I took it to the barn. And of course, my horse has a really long mane and I like it to look spectacular. When we go out, we have to be kid presentable. We got to look good when we go out. So I was I was conditioning her hair. I put it a hair oil on my hands, and I ran it through her hair and I combed it out. And then we went on a trail ride. And as we were going up the trail, these two little girls and their mom were walking the opposite direction. And I heard as I passed by, mom, what is that smell? It smells like Froot Loops. And I was lost. So we went a little bit farther up the trail. We turned around and we came back and I noticed the girls were still hanging out in the same spot because they wanted to pet the horse. So I came over there and they said, see, mom, it is the horse. I smell it on the horse. That stuff has some staying power, but I'm not sure how to best incorporate it into my grooming because two days after the trail ride, her hair's entangles, her mane is tangled. And I also have cowboy magic detangling gel that I've used on her. And very similar thing happened when I use Best shot. The max and I put a little bit on my fingers and I run it through and I detangle her with that. There's never any greasy feeling in the hair. Actually feels detangled for a lot longer than it did with either one of these other two products. The third product I use is the Equus gel. That one doesn't do it. That just smells nice and reacts more like best shot the max does. Why am I ending up with Tangly hair a couple days after. Is it picking up dirt? And maybe that's what's happening and it's holding on to dirt, whereas the other two products don't hold the dirt. It's very weird, and it makes me not want to use it. Except for that they smelled me like halfway down the trail. I thought that was pretty cool. Um. Well, I have to confess that I haven't found a use for mine. My oil yet. I would have thought that it would be good on a short coated dog like your boxers, your bullies, your Dobermans, just as a humidifying and protecting from moisture loss kind of an ingredient. And to give some sheen. At the moment, you wouldn't expect to have sheen three days later, but you wouldn't expect to have any tangling either. I had dreadlocks. Oh yeah. But she does go out and roll in the dust. So that's the only thing I could think of, is it's attracting the dust. Yeah, it for some reason it has to be allowing for static electricity throughout the main, uh, which is kind of bad news. I didn't use it on my Maltese because I didn't want to take a chance that I have, uh, enough of a problem with him. I used the detangler spray in the glass bottle that they sent along. That the lovely. Oh, did you actually get it to work? Because I couldn't get it to work. You have to turn the very end of the nozzle, the opening of the nozzle. You have to turn that to the fine spray setting, which Jodie found it for me and I sprayed it. And you know, he just said, well, there you go. And I said, okay, I, I didn't find that the glass bottle is a bust for me. I love it, I love the way it looks and I will keep it where I can see it. I love the logo on it. It's nice and big and it's it's just real funky, you know, it's real prominent. It's real happy. Funky groomer. Yeah, I would be a funky groomer, thank you very much. And I like that. But using the bottle, even once I got the nozzle to work for me, it was too heavy and it would get slippery from the the product getting on my hands, the detangling product getting on my hands. But the detangling product itself. And I did dilute it. I filled the the whole bottle up with water, so I diluted at least two to one. Um, and it would dilute much more. That's true of all of their products are very dilutable. Right. And for me, they work better diluted. But let's see, I think it I think it was oh, I know I did a brush out of Marco like two weeks after a bath before I gave him a new bath the next day, and he had some tangling in there, some matting, and it worked real good. Um, it made the coat a little more wet than I am used to, but it still combed out real good. Um, and he didn't pitch a fit about tugging and all of that kind of stuff. So it was it was very helpful. I also used the Detangler. Yeah, I used it in the spray bottle. It came in, so I used it at whatever dilution rate it was in the spray bottle as and I liked it. I thought it was good and it smelled nice and it did a good job. It didn't quite do. Once again, I'm best shot spoiled. Didn't quite do as well as best shot. If I did not have access to best shot products, I would absolutely buy all of the products except the hair oil, which I'm still working with. I gotta think through the hair oil thing, uh, because, uh, Christopher from Funky Poodle is very proud of that because it's such a simple product. It's really just sunflower seed oil and fragrance oil. Would it be a hot oil treatment kind of thing or a overnight conditioner kind of thing? I mean, I wonder where it would fit in best or a fragrance. Oh, it's good at that. Like a Cologne? Yes. But where do you apply it? Where? Yeah. So you don't end up with the. The thicker greasier hair worked really well as a fragrance extender. Oh my goodness. It's like you can still smell it on her if you just spritz over the dog and you're not working it through the coat, you're probably not going to get that whole other thing happening. Okay, that's a good suggestion. Now that you've had that experience, I feel like I need to go to mine and try it on somebody or on myself and get a better idea Uh, for that, uh, why it would do that? Did you try the scissor spray? No. Did you? I did yesterday, yeah. Yes. And it no static. It seemed to be fine. I'm not a big user of scissor sprays. I think it did wet it down more than I'm used to, but that could have been me with a heavy hand. Although I have it in a bottle. So it's, you know, the little micro spray. I have this housekeeper that doesn't ever let things be, uh, he wants to clear every surface every twice a week and put everything away in different places than I would put it. And I had all my funky poodle stuff together on a table, and he put things away in about three different places, and I can't find the scissoring spray somewhere in the closet. Probably. So sorry. Um, okay. Well, then I'm just going to say we will revisit the scissoring spray and Barbara's use of the hair oil. I did, however, text my lagotto romagnolo dog person who I was looking after the dog for several months and suggested that she look into the funky poodle products for Lily because, um, Lily's got this wonky hair that gets matted at the roots, and I think the shampoo and conditioner might be helpful with that. I recommend that the products for, uh, rustic coats, they have some really cool fragrances. They have Witches Brew, they have Miami Vice. That one that's got my interest piqued. The Christmas ones are. Candy cane. Ooh, witch! Oh, I totally want that. And there's another one. And now I cannot find it. They have pumpkin spice, of course. Like everybody. Fresh linen. Uh, they just have some cool, interesting and different smell combinations that have me wanting to try some of the other shampoo mixes. Not saying I'm doing it for sure, because I'm sure it'll cost me a fortune to get it out here. I'm not sure where they are, but I think I might try to buy some of this stuff. Good. So mission accomplished. What's his name? Christopher. Christopher. Good job. Thank you. We really appreciate it. I hope you get a groom pod bump from us? Yeah. Because these products are worth. Worth the good products and fun products and fun company. And I think they really deserve support. And, you know, I am going to say something. It's hard to love every single item of every brand. You know, they're going to every every brand. That's good. You're going to have your favorite things and some not so much items in there. Uh, so it goes for our sponsors. It goes for everybody. It's just the law of. Nature that, uh. It's true. You know, but I, I think that this is off to a good start, and I hope that we can nudge some business your way. Christopher. Yes. Thanks again. We appreciate it. And anybody else who wants to encourage their favorite shampoo companies or distributors to send us neat things to test out. We're happy to do it. As a matter of fact, we love to test out new stuff and new products. So keep that in mind and let's take a break, Barbara. And then we're going to come back with our grooming disasters. Let me tell you about Best Shot's newest addition to the Ultramax Pro line. Ultramax Hair hold is a flexible hairspray that can be layered on for a stronger hold. Ultramax Hair Hold spray is great, but my favorite new product is called the Max and I won't groom without it. It's a fragrance free ultra concentrate conditioner and detangler. It reduces drying time and handles undercoat and tangles like magic. Just a few drops in the final, rinse or spray it on and dry it in. Contact your favorite best shot distributor or learn more online at Best Shot dot com. Grooming success begins with best shot in your tub made from the best stuff on Earth. Ready groomers. Here comes our first appointment. So I have already disabled the anonymous posting. I left it up there for two days, but I hate anonymous posting. So. So if you guys want to post your story anonymously, you miss the window. You need to be checking at our discussion group. And by the way, welcome to all the new people who have joined us in the last month. It's just been crazy. I don't think a day goes by where I don't add like five or six people, and some days as many as ten or twelve people. Especially when there's a show going on. Like this weekend, fun in the sun is happening in Orlando and we're just getting hit every time I turn my Facebook on. There's more people waiting to get into the group. That group is facebook.com. That's where we talk about everything we do on the show. That's where we find the questions that we include in the show. And that's where we posted this particular question, which was, tell us about your grooming disasters. And Barbara and I both have a couple disasters. We had twenty five responses and they're long responses. So I will encourage you guys to go take a look at the responses at our group discussion group on Facebook and read some of them. They're interesting. I'm going to start out with one of my favorite stories. I groom a dog across the street from the house I grew up in with a neighbor. That was until like four months ago, still alive. Her parents were, uh, ninety two and ninety four, and they still lived in the house that was across from where we moved into in Nineteen sixty three. And I know the kids, they were my age and they have Westies, so I was grooming their Westies for the first time, and the dogs would spend daycare time at grandma's house. So they were up by my parents house, and I was parked in front of my parents house reminiscing about my childhood as I groomed the dogs. And when I finished, I figured most of my dogs head straight in the house. That's just what they do. So I put the dog on the ground, and I was going to get the leash out and put it on her, and she took off running and ran right past grandma's house. And mind you, grandma's ninety at this point and I've got my phone in my hand and I'm running after the dog and I'm screaming, Maddie! Maddie. And luckily we're in a neighborhood, so there wasn't a lot of traffic. But I'm calling on the phone and I'm like, Maddie's running away. Where is she going to go? And Mrs. Kramer said she's probably headed to Kimberly's house. Do you remember where your campfire Girl meetings were? They bought the Sobotka house. You need to head to the Sobotka house. And I'm like, okay. And she said, I'm going to send Bill out too. And I'm thinking, no, don't send him out. Then I've got two people to chase after because he's older than she is. And I ran all the way to my campfire girl house, and sure enough, Maddie was standing outside the door. They were at work, but I picked the dog back up and walked all the way back to the house. But never put your dog down. That was potentially a horrible, horrible disaster. I was just very lucky that no cars ran across. Have you ever lost a dog or had any big issues that way? I did, as a matter of fact, it wasn't my fault. My shop was on a street, Grant Road in Tucson, which is a really main east west thoroughfare. Uh, four lanes and all of that. And when I first opened up in late seventy seven, there was a school zone out there. So I was grooming this Old English Sheepdog, and they insisted that I used their leash, which was a braided leather, you know, round braided leather leash with a little snap on it. Well, I took the dog to out to the side of the shop to have a potty break because she looked like she really needed to. And she did her business. And then she jerked away and she snapped that snap, and she ran right out into the middle of Grant road. Oh my gosh, that is a busy road. And fortunately it was time where the Fifteen mile an hour thing was happening, and there was this little small compact car came up beside her, and this hand reached out and grabbed her from the car and held her. There was a couple of coeds from the university and they just, like, stopped her in her tracks right in the middle of the road. And I ran out there and I got the damn dog. That was many gray hairs. That was many gray hairs. And after that, I never used the people's leash to take the dogs out. I always used my equipment that I trusted, that I knew was safe. But I did have a fatality. It wasn't my fault. But the stupid guy, he brings his dogs in the back of his pickup truck that's big in Arizona, and he had a new puppy and an old on its last legs. Some kind of a I don't know. But when he picked the dogs up, he took the puppy first, and he just put it in the back of the truck all by itself and then came back, I said, what are you doing? I thought he was going to put it in the cab. No. He puts the puppy in the back of the truck with the rear end sticking out to the street. The puppy just jumped out and ran into Grant road and got smashed. And we had to watch it die. And then it was her horrible, horrible, horrible. Um. That's bad. All those things happen. They underscore the importance of of you emphasizing the importance of security and bringing dogs in and out. I mean, I had a lady that used to come in carrying her cat and there was Grant road. It always carried her cat. I said, you need to at least put it in a pillowcase and wrap it up to come in here. No, it's my baby. You know, like, oh, God, it's a beautiful, beautiful cat. Um, we didn't lose that cat, but we lost a cat at the vet hospital that somebody brought in just that way. And the cat jumped off, and they never found the cat again. And, uh, those things are terrible. Uh, I had a, um, Irish wolfhound get away from us. So that was another kind of a thing, because at my shop, I had a front door and then the counter with a half gate, and then the room where we groomed, and then a wall with a half gate and then the bathing and drying room. Well, I was working in the middle room and my helper was working in the back of the room. Well, she wanted to take the Irish Wolfhound out for a walk, you know. By the way, when I rented that building in nineteen seventy seven, I tried to get permission from the city to put a completely covered run out there so that I could put the dogs in a run before we gave them a bath and let them pee and poop. The city wouldn't let me. So that was that. But she took this dog out. This tall, tall dog out for a potty break, came back and dropped the leash in front of me and turned to do something else, and immediately the dog flew over the gate, ran to the front door, and somebody came in the front door, right as the dog was there, and it just slipped out and it headed east. Wow. And I just sent that bather. You better catch that dog. Do not come back until you have that dog. And she chased that dog within two blocks of its home. And walked the dog back, and. And the people came and we didn't say anything. But you got the dog back. That was another close to disaster things. And. And every time something bad happens, I always would try to find any and all lessons to be learned. I mean, that's the only way that I could deal with it. It was saying, okay, there's something for me to know about this, to learn from this. And, um, and I'm going to I'll confess another disaster thing that was my own fault. No harm was done. But I had this little kind of large toy poodle. A silver poodle that people had found in downtown Tucson, which is a barrio and one of the old original barrios of Tucson. And so there's some people lived there, a little bit different lifestyle than the usual urban things. And this dog was walking along the sidewalk. These people picked it up and rehomed it without even trying to find the owner. I have had that happen two or three times that people would rescue a dog off the street and just make the assumption that it was not loved. Well, that's that's wrong anyway. So I love this little dog. Its name was Guillermo. He had a little bit of a underbite, and I fixed him up with a little mustache, a little, you know, round muzzle. And I just. I had him groomed. I had a little style that I loved on him. Well, down the line, two or three years, I groomed the Guillermo. The husband started chipping away at my style. Like, would I take it above the eyes? You know, the things that I hated, absolutely hated to do. And I would attempt to do a little shorter here and there and meet their expectations. And then they wanted more short. He wanted more off, more off. So I went for it because sometimes I my own resistance to because I own these styles. It was an ego thing. It really was my own resistance. I just in order to break through it, I have to just push and do it. Well. They hated the groom and she thought that I was being retaliatory, and I probably was. It was like, okay, here you go. Here's over the eyes. That's. How's that look? That's what you asked for. You know, like, that was my attitude. She was right. And I just had to accept that I lost that customer and it was my own fault. Um, because I gave it an ugly version. And, uh, I mean, I tried so hard not to go into ugliness, and it wasn't short enough here and there, and I sort of felt like I was caught in a Shakespearean play where I was was it was doomed. Doomed to failure. I had two major need to go to the vet. Disasters. Well, luckily I was at the vet because I was grooming at the vet at the time, but I took off a dewclaw. Uh, just right off. Yep. On a tiny little Yorkie mix. It was one of those dangling, detached dewclaws. Yeah, I know. And you actually probably did a favor, and I certainly did for myself, but I was a basket case. The lady was consoling me. She's like, calm down. It's okay. The dog is fine. It's not even bleeding. And I'm like, oh my God, I just got your or dogs. New cloth. That was a bad one. It wasn't the first visit. So, see, you had a relationship. I had one happen. It was a first visit and I took off the dangling dewclaw. And, um, I, I, I didn't have a breakdown like you, but I was really sorry, and I never saw them again. I bandaged it, I fixed it all up. But my other major was. I turned to be shone into a snake tongue. He sliced its tongue. Ah! Oh, right down the center. Yeah. Blood everywhere. I just was finishing up the the dog. It was one of those dogs that, and I was early in my grooming career that the tongue darted out. Anytime you were anywhere near the mouth or. I mean, if you just touch the mouth, the tongue was out. It was like had a mind of its own. And she just timed it perfectly that I snipped down as she stuck her tongue out and I cut it right in half. And not all. Just a good a good chunk of it. So once again, I was grateful that I was at the vet hospital, and I took it straight into surgery and they stitched up the tongue because it wouldn't stop bleeding. Those are my two biggest actual injuries that I've ever done, but both were my fault. I also had a I had a cat pass away two days after grooming that I am not one hundred percent sure there were pre-existing conditions and all kinds of things like that, but I felt like I may have stressed the cat out a little bit, uh, because it was warm in there and she was fighting a little bit. Uh, but it was two days and they did take the cat to the vet, and then they found all kinds of underlying problems. But if I hadn't had groomed the cat, it probably would have lived at least a little while longer. And I felt bad about that one. But I did have a funny one, a funny disaster. And then I will again say, you guys go read the posts that are on the Facebook page because there are some really interesting and lesson learned kind of things on there. I was training my replacement at a vet hospital I worked at here in Bellevue, Washington, and, uh, she I really liked the girl. She was really great. She was learning so well. And we got in a brother and sister golden retriever, and my student had just bought a clipper vac, and she was really excited. She had been using mine, so it wasn't like she had never used it. She had been probably within two months of finishing up her intensive grooming. And I've got my back to her. I'm working on the one sibling she's got, the other sibling on the other side of the room and I hear, uh oh. And I said, what happened? And she said, oh God, oh God, don't turn around. And I and I went, well, I have to turn around, Kim. I got to see what happened and I turn around. She took the forty blade from the collar to the tail, down the center of the back of the dog forty blade. I don't know what she was doing with a forty blade on. I thought maybe she was using it under a comb and she didn't put the comb on, and she just ran that. We comped those people their wellness exams that they were in for their vaccines on two dogs and both of the grooming. And they still never came back. Come on, people, it's hair. It was funny. It was a reverse mohawk. Everybody would have been talking about it. We could have colored it up for her and made it really fun. But instead they were just really rotten people, and they didn't appreciate how backwards these people bent to give them everything that day for free. I told them that they were getting one dog groomed by my trainee and they were fine with that. It's true. I didn't expect her to take a forty blade down the middle of the dog's back. But in the big picture, compared to slicing a tongue in half or removing a dewclaw, it was a nothing burger. And these people were just offended and unhappy and called and complained. That's the only really complaint I've ever gotten. I'm sure people have left with unhappy haircuts because, you know, I'm not the best scissor, obviously. But one time a lady called back the vet hospital and said that she was certain that I had molested her male poodle. Ah, that I had played with this little winkie. She was a drinker. I mean, we all knew it because you could smell her when she came in the door. But to call back and complain that I played with her dogs. Oh my God, oh my God, I'll never forget that. So there's the grooming Disaster stories. Some funny, some not. Uh, yeah. Go check the ones out on Facebook. Let's take a break and then we're going to come back with Barbara's. Good, bad and ugly about Chris Christensen. Show season has a great enzymatic cleaner called Kendall Fresh. And you dilute it with warm water and it smells good. And then it evaporates to be a deodorant. As the Kendall Fresh dries, it's enzymatic. It eats the bacteria and the odor source. So it's really good stuff. You can use it indoors or out, find it at your local distributors or show season grooming dot com. And remember, if you want more information about Kendall Fresh, you can look at the blog post that we put up on the website page. The groom Pod and Precision Sharp would like to invite you to check out the newest precise cut shear called links. Its patented design features a thumb ring that slides the length of the handle for perfect ergonomic placement of your thumb, slide it, lock it into place, and get your best grooms on. Check it out at precision. Groomers, take your seats. It's time for B birds classroom. So a couple years ago now, Chris Christensen was bought out by Nexus. So here we are a little bit later. What are what are we seeing in their products these days? Barbara, check out on Chris Christensen every now and then. You know, did I tell you that I turned down a full time job with them? No, I yeah, it was one of those. I turned down several jobs, like I turned down a job to become a faculty member of the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. I turned down a job to become a government worker under the National Institute of Mental Health. I'm so glad now that I didn't take that one. Yeah, and I turned down a job at at after the year that I spent taught speaking for Chris Christensen. Right. They offered me a full time job. I would have to have sold my business and moved to Bumfuck, Texas, where they lived, and they had a trailer on the property. They even had me over and showed me the trailer and it was real nice. It was a double wide and it was roomy and had acreage out there for dogs to run, but I just didn't feel All right, giving up all of my letting go of my clients and letting go of everything and moving and being under their thumb, so to speak. You know, I just didn't seem safe. And I'm glad that I didn't take it, although I'm sure I would have become more famous maybe if I had. So. So I still, you know, like I still have a connection there, and I still check in every now and then. And we had a, an exchange on the Facebook group and somebody mentioned that they were like really happy and and devoted to Chris Christianson ice on ice. So I thought, oh wow. You know, like that's it's not the same as the max from Best Shot that we love so much. It's kind of older technology, isn't it? Yeah, I thought so. I thought so. And I went and took a look and oh my God, I found they have. Now they're posted ingredients for the every product on the website. Wow. And not only do they post the ingredients, but on many of the products, they list them in a like a one through ten list and define each ingredient. Wow. So they give you what that ingredient does. Their version of what that ingredient does. And they've done that. The ice on ice used to simply be a silicone emulsion. That's how it was explained silicone emulsion. Well, I figured because of when it was established and when they started having it, that it was a dimethicone oil that was made water soluble by adding an emulsifier. Right. Right. So I expected to go there and find that. And I found it is really complex. Are you ready for this? Okay, I'm sitting down. It's a water soluble in water product with water as the first ingredient, then Polyquaternium forty seven. Well, we've run into that before. That's a second generation cationic conditioner. It's synthetic and it improves texture, moisture retention and detangling. And the definition fits my understanding of how that ingredient works. Then they have cetyl tri triethylammonium dimethicone peg eight succinate. Holy crap is that another quat? That is a silicone based conditioning agent. It is a clot. It's a quaternary. It's also a synthetic silicone based conditioning agent that enhances smoothness and shine, reduces frizz, provides moisture resistance, and improves the overall feel of hair. And I agree that I had to look it up, but that's pretty much what the, uh, chemical supplier says it is. And then they have silicone quaternium two panthenol succinate. So they've combined silicone and panthenol. How exciting. Yeah, it doesn't take much for me, right? Uh, and I really like the way that it's a conditioning agent. That's that's the combination of silicone and panthenol. And it is a film former. And it is a conditioning agent. It's, um, very, very cationic. But I like the way that the chemical supplier defines that ingredient better than the way Chris Christensen person defines it. So the name of it again is silicone Quaternium two panthenol succinate, and the chemical supplier described it as a silicone panthenol quaternary compound that delivers the benefits of panthenol with a highly substantive silicone clot. Highly sensitive means it really sticks to the hair. Panthenol is a humectant, emollient, and moisturizer. It spreads evenly on the hair on the surface of hair strands, forming a smooth film on the surface of the cuticle. This provides excellent slip between adjacent strands of hair and detangling properties. Panthenol is capable of penetrating the cuticle and entering the hair shaft as well, where it aids in moisture retention and provides volume. That's pretty snazzy. I would like to talk to a cosmetic chemist. I might even go to the cosmetic chemist group and ask this question. If Panthenol, when combined with silicone, is still able to penetrate the cuticle, I have a little bit of wonderment about that, that if in the form of this new polyquat, that it can still seep through and enter the inner inner area of the hair. But that ingredient, then it contains methylhydroxypropylcellulose, which is a thickener, just to give it some texture and something other than just water running through your fingers. Um, it's, um, preserved with parabens, by all means. And it contains perfume. They which they describe as a carefully blended fragrance that provides a pleasant plum scent. Do you know why they picked the plum scent? I can only imagine from plum. Silky. Absolutely. So popular. Exactly. It's so bright. It's so bright. That's exactly it. Suzy. Good girl, I love you. It enhances the user experience while being formulated for skin sensitivity. Well, that's reassuring, and I like having that there. Um, then it's got Octoxinol ten. That's an iffy ingredient. We have to recognize that. But I think I have a feeling that this ingredient panel is in correct proportion to how much is in volume. Um, and I don't think there's very much a toxin. All ten. It's a non-ionic surfactant that aids in emulsifying and stabilizing the formula. It's iffy because there's some slight issue with Octoxinol ten and nine and some of the octoxynol ingredients that they shed. Byproducts. And the byproduct in this case would be ethylene oxide, which is a toxic petroleum thing. But I'm sure that there's not enough in here to make it toxic. At last it has triad ethanolamine. P adjuster to balance the acidity and alkalinity. Um, generally, when they use Triethanolamine as a pH adjuster, it's in order to make it more alkaline, because that's very alkaline. Okay. Okay. Uh, Chris Christiansen has introduced a new spray technology. It's got like an inner say in the in the bottle that holds the no air around it. That was the original Flora Sol. Bottles were that way. I want to try this. I think that this is a new formula for Chris Christensen, because when they first started, I saw an I. There wasn't anything like silicone Quaternium two panthenol succinate happening. This has to be a fairly new overall formula, and I want to try it real bad. And it costs twenty four bucks an hour, twenty five bucks for sixteen ounces. Somebody buy Barbara a bottle of ice on ice and send it to her on Amazon. If several people were to contribute five bucks to the Bee Bird donation button, I'd have it covered. You know, I just can't quite justify it because I've got botanical, botanical brushing spray, I've got funky poodle, I've got other stuff, and I've got two dogs that don't even get done every two weeks, so. Help! Help! I think this is far out now. Um, they also have a rundown like this on smartwatch fifty that that one has. Still, it has the. Ingredients all defined, but it's still in the old order, which is just a trashy order. With sodium chloride salt as the first solid ingredient, that's just stupid. They took out a. Couple of ingredients from the original smartwatch. They they replaced mine oxide with cocamidopropyl betaine. And they they dropped an ingredient or two. So they've simplified it a little bit. And I probably made it, all of which probably cost less. One of the things you just really need to keep in mind if you're using the Chris Christiansen smartwatch, Art is that the shampoo contains zero. No, absolutely no conditioning ingredients other than cocamidopropyl betaine would give. A little bit of conditioning, but it's not enough to really call it a conditioning shampoo. So you really do need to use another product, a conditioner, when you're using that smart wash. And if you want it that way, if you are looking for a shampoo, I'll tell you why I don't like. I'll just be honest with you. Smart wash fifty uses sodium dodo to the dodo, the benzene sulfonate. And the thing about that ingredient is that it's mostly used. Is that the floor cleaner? Floor cleaners? Yeah. And cleaning and more industrial and more, you know, hard surface cleaning than hair. And it was in the original smartwatch. And I think it's where they get the fifty percent Dilutable is you really want to dilute that sodium. That's a that's a cheap ingredient. I'm sorry, but you know, it's not a top shelf. You find it here and there in shampoos, but you don't find it on top shelves. And Chris Christensen markets themselves as top shelf. So I'm just saying that that ingredient is inconsistent with their images. I get it, and let's just leave it at that for today. So there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that the ingredients are all there on the website and that they've they've defined many of the ingredients. Not all, not all products. It looks like it's something that's kind of in process. But the bad news is that some of the older products are the ingredients are listed in haphazard order. Okay, so that's where we're at. Well, thanks for sticking with us, you guys. Thanks for listening. As always. Support our sponsors, support Barbara Byers some ice on ice and send it to her and or else donate one or the other one of you. I had the Groupon. Might have to send her the bottle. We could do that. We could do that. All right. Anyway, I'm off to groom my two sons and my schnauzer today. Anyway, happy grooming everyone. We'll see you next time on the groom pod. Bye bye now. And remember, we love you, so take care of yourselves.