Which questions are worth losing a booking over?

You did ask about the coat. The form says "good condition, brushed daily". Bella arrives pelted behind both ears and down the back legs, and the ninety minutes you set aside is now a dematting job you're pricing with a wet dog on the table.

The topics on a booking form are the easy part. Coat, last groom, temperament. That list isn't hard to arrive at. The narrower question is which of the answers you can act on before the dog is in front of you.

What can an answer actually change?

Three things, and it's worth being strict about it. An answer can change how long the slot needs to be, what the groom costs, or who takes the dog, including whether you take it at all. A question whose answer changes none of those three belongs on the record instead, and a record can wait until the dog is standing in front of you.

Strict is the right setting because questions aren't free. Each one you add sits between a booking and someone at eleven at night, on a phone, one-handed, with a dog asleep on their feet. Ask nothing and the difference lands on you: minutes you didn't charge for, and a day that runs late from the second appointment onwards. Ask everything and the answers get worse as well as fewer, because someone racing to the end of a long form ticks whatever gets them there.

Ask for a fact, not a verdict

"Is your dog matted?" asks an owner to grade their own care in front of a professional, before they've met you. You'll get "no" from people whose dog is pelted to the skin, and they're not lying. Matted means something different when you're the one who has been brushing the top coat and nothing underneath it for eight weeks.

"When was her last full groom?" asks for a date. A date is checkable and a condition is a matter of opinion, and the date does most of the same work anyway. Twelve weeks on a doodle tells you more than any adjective the owner would have picked.

That swap works everywhere on the form. Instead of "is he good with grooming?", ask whether a groom has ever had to be stopped early. Instead of "what size is he?", ask what he weighs. A fact is something nobody has to defend, which is exactly why you get it straight.

Setting the length of the slot

Weeks since the last full groom, what the owner is actually asking for, rough weight, how the dog dries, and how many dogs are on the one booking. That's most of it. Everything else is detail you can pick up on the day.

Breed is the question nearly every form asks and the weakest of the useful ones. Two cavoodles at the same weight are a seventy-minute job and a two-hour job, and the difference is what happened in the eight weeks before. Breed tells you what the coat wants to do. The date tells you what it's been allowed to do.

Drying is the one groomers under-ask. A dog that will sit in a box for forty minutes and a dog you have to stand next to with a dryer in your hand are the same booking on paper and a different afternoon in practice.

A photo helps here, with a caveat: photos get taken in good light, from the front, by someone who likes the dog. Worth having beside the answers, never in place of them.

Which questions have to come before the price?

Anything that moves the number. A quote is the one part of a booking you can't quietly take back: once the dog is on the table you're not raising a price, you're renegotiating one, with wet hands and someone waiting.

Two things make a pricing question survive contact with a real owner. It has to be one they can't get wrong by accident: a weight bracket, a date, a service they picked off your list, never a judgement call. And the consequence should be visible while they're choosing rather than at pickup. An owner who selects the thick double coat and sees what it adds has agreed to the price. An owner who finds out at the counter has been surprised, even when the number is exactly right.

The group everybody leaves off

Bite history, whether a groom has ever been stopped, age and anything that limits how long the dog can stand, and whether you've seen this dog before. This is the only group whose answer can end a booking rather than shape it.

It's also the group that goes missing from forms, because asking about bites reads like you're expecting trouble. The alternative is finding out with your hands, on a Saturday, halfway through a face trim. Asked as events rather than character (stopped early, muzzled, needed two people), it reads as competence, and owners of difficult dogs are usually relieved someone finally asked.

With a team, these answers decide who the booking goes to. On your own, they decide whether the honest answer is a slot or a phone call.

Everything else can wait

How they found you, the address, the vet's number, what she gets fed, the bow at the end. All useful, none of it changes the booking you're accepting. Collect it at drop-off, or on the profile afterwards, where a wrong answer costs nothing.

Keep one open box for the thing you didn't think to ask. It's the only question that catches what the others were never going to.

And stop asking a regular what you already know. A dog you've groomed eight times shouldn't be re-answering her own coat type; asking again tells a client you don't remember her. Answers do age at different rates, though. A weight and a coat type hold for a year, while the condition of that coat is only true for about as long as the gap between grooms.

How many questions is too many?

There's no number. What matters is where people stop, and that's different for a regular rebooking on a Tuesday and a stranger who found you at ten on a Sunday night.

So order them by what they change. The ones that set the slot and the price go first, the nice-to-knows last. Done that way, a form someone abandons halfway through has still told you the half you needed.

Four swaps worth making today

• "Is she matted?" becomes "When was her last full groom, and who brushes her in between?"
• "Is he good for grooming?" becomes "Has a groom ever been stopped early, or has he been muzzled for one?"
• "What size is he?" becomes "What does he weigh, roughly?"
• "Any health issues?" becomes "Anything that means he can't stand for long, or can't take warm air?"

Same four topics, four answers you can actually book against.

Keep reading

• Pricing questions — setting up the answers that move a price.
• Who gets to put a dog in your diary? — whether the booking is confirmed, requested, or comes through you.
• How long a groom actually takes — the other half of setting the slot.
• Seglo for pet grooming.