Paws For Prevention: The Power of Wellness-based Dog Grooming Wag Out Loud

Hi everyone! This is Krista with Episode #186 on the Wag Out Loud pawdcast. Did you know that canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome, or CCDS, is very common, and it affects about 28% of 11 - 12 year old dogs, and 68% of 15 - 16 year old dogs? So it's a good idea to be aware with your senior pup. And the most common signs and symptoms of CCDS to watch out for are disorientation, abnormal interactions, changes with their sleep or wake cycle, house soiling, increased or decreased activity, and learning difficulties or memory loss. But if your dog has CCDS, don't panic, and know that dogs that have it tend to live just as long as dogs that experience healthy aging. But you can make things easier for them by keeping stress to a minimum and maintain a regular routine for meals walks and bedtime and wake time.

Welcome to the Wag Out Loud pawdcast, where we are obsessed with bringing you helpful tips on canine health care, nutrition, and overall wellbeing. If you'd like to support the show, check out the amazing online events, products and resources that I personally recommend on the Wag Out Loud website. I'm your host, Krista and I'm super excited to be bringing you yet another tail wagging episode.

Christy Boswell is an experienced operations leader turned entrepreneur ushering the nation's first wellness centered, membership-based dog grooming service into the Denver metropolitan area.

Hi there dog lovers! Welcome to yet another fantastic Wag Out Loud pawdcast episode. And today I am chatting with my guest, Christy Boswell. And she is going to be chatting with us about paws for prevention, the power of wellness based dog grooming. So Christy, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Yeah, of course, thank you so much for having me,

This is going to be great. Well, I'm going to ask you to please introduce yourself and give us a little more about your background and why you are so obsessed with wellness-based dog grooming.

Yeah, absolutely. So my background is actually a little bit unusual for considering what I what I am doing now. Just that I've been in the corporate world for about 20 years doing management consulting and decided I really wanted to branch out into kind of an entrepreneurial fashion and in opening my own business. And so decided to do the franchise route. And in so doing came across the concept of wellness-based dog grooming, and so signed on to become a franchisee with a company called the Scenthound. And it's a very interesting concept. It's a new concept for the for the grooming world, in that we're really very much focused on educating pet parents on the importance of grooming, and how that can impact their dog's long term health. So I signed on with them in 2020, and have opened two stores in the Denver area. And so just in the experience, you know, that I've been doing this in the last couple of years, I've learned so much. But it's really, I think the most gratifying thing is seeing or seeing the concept in action and, and how we can help how we can actually play a role in helping pet parents, you know, understand how they can take care of their dogs and extend their dog's lives just by doing simple grooming things, or, you know, just pointing things out to them that maybe they wouldn't have noticed, you know, just because we do have hands on the dog a lot more often. So, you know, that's one of the biggest, you know, advantages to what I'm doing now. But just very, you know, really gotten into the wellness, wellness dog industry in the last couple of years. Trying to understand more about nutrition, and that sort of thing. And so, it's a really great approach to grooming.

And I love it. I love the education piece and you're right our dog's wellness depends on so many different aspects. And maybe a lot of us don't think about grooming as part of a wellness plan ,if you will. So Christy, I know that when we first met, you talked about that you believe that regular maintenance is absolutel