By Tien-Shun Lee
Even after being bitten and continually barked at by dogs, the owners of 164th Street Pet Salon in Fresh Meadows still say “Awwww” when they see a cute dog walking down the street.
“A dog can wrestle us all day and then, boom! You’re finished and it’s licking your face and you forget what you just went through,” said Cathy Loscalzo, 38, after putting the finishing touch on a freshly groomed dog — a pink ribbon around its ear.
With nearly 20 years of dog- and cat-grooming experience under their belts, Loscalzo and her partner, Marilyn Virga, 33, decided to open their own pet salon last April after the two met while working at Happy Pet Tails, a pet salon in Bayside.
Pet Salon, at 77-35 164th St., is a two-person operation that offers complete dog-grooming packages, which include a bath, ear-cleaning, nail-clipping and hair cut, for $40. Specialty baths, such as oatmeal baths for dry skin and medicated baths for fungal infections or fleas and ticks, cost $5 extra. Additional fees also are charged for dogs with matted hair and for dogs that have their hair cut with scissors instead of an electric clipper.
“We’ve built up business a lot,” Loscalzo said. “Each week about half of your customers are new.”
The salon also offers grooming for cats, which starts at $55. The cost is higher because cats, which generally are more independent in nature, are more difficult to groom, Loscalzo said.
Some of the most rewarding moments when working as a groomer are when the owners pick up their pet and see their pooch transformed, the owners said.
“It’s like sculpture on a live statue,” Virga said. “You try to give the dog the haircut that fits its personality.”
Loscalzo and Virga began their dog-grooming careers in the 1980s, both attending the New York School of Dog Grooming in Manhattan, where they were given three months’ worth of hands-on training and learned the basics about how to trim a dog’s hair, starting from the back of the dog and working up toward the head.
“In the beginning, it was frustrating because the dogs never looked like the dogs in the magazines,” said Virga, who worked at The Tailored Dog in New Hyde Park after graduating from grooming school at age 16. “Then one day, about two years after I started, I said, ‘Oh my God’ and the dogs all started looking beautiful.”
Dressed in sweatshirts and sneakers and covered with dog hair, the owners said they consider their profession an art.
“The key is focusing on what you’re doing and losing yourself like an artist does in his painting,” Virga said. “I’d say 95 percent of the time the owners are very happy. The other 5 percent are people whose dogs were in such poor condition that they have to be shaved.”
On various occasions, people have brought in dogs that they found on the streets or that were extremely neglected, the owners said. Once, the fur on a little white poodle was so badly matted to its skin that they had to sit with it for hours, slowly peeling its fur off. Another time, a dog had maggots living in a sore underneath its tail.
“People could avoid a lot of vet bills if they had their dog groomed on a monthly basis,” Virga said. “We try to train the people and make them aware that their dog needs to be groomed on a monthly basis.”
When not grooming dogs, Loscalzo spends most of her time taking care of her four kids, three dogs and cat, while Virga hangs out with her friends and four pets — a dog, a fat goldfish, a cockatiel and a parrot that likes to say “I love you” and “What are you doing?”
The Pet Salon is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. The salon generally receives about eight to 10 dogs on weekdays and about 20 dogs on Saturdays. Each dog takes about an hour to two-and-a-half hours to groom.
Grooming is done in the back room, which is equipped with 23 cages, an elevated bathtub, doggie shampoo, a dog table, electric clippers, wire brushes, a no-heat hair blower for general dog drying and a heat-generating hair dryer for special styling.
Anyone interested in having his or her dog and cat groomed can call 1-718-591-DOGS to set up an appointment. Walk-ins also are welcome.
Reach reporter Tien-Shun Lee by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com, or call 1-718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
