The first groom is the one you're guessing at

A cavoodle you've never seen is booked for ten o'clock Saturday. The owner said tidy-up, said he's good as gold, said he gets brushed. You've got a name, a breed and forty-five minutes in the diary, and you won't know whether any of that was true until he's on the table.

A regular in that same slot is nothing like the same booking. You know what his last groom took, because you did it. You know he's fine everywhere except the back end with the dryer, and you know his owner will be twenty minutes late. None of that is written on the booking. It's in his file or it's in your head, and it's the reason the slot is honest.

So a first-time booking isn't a smaller version of a regular's booking. It's the same booking with the file missing, and everything you do differently for a new dog is a way of buying that file up front. You'll pay for it in one of four currencies.

Questions, minutes, price, or the slot itself

• Questions. Ask more before you hold the time. Every extra one is another chance for someone booking at eleven at night to give up halfway, and the answers still come from a person whose idea of matted isn't yours.
• Minutes. Give the first groom longer than you'd give the same breed on a regular. It's the only currency that works no matter what the owner told you, and it's the one you can't sell twice. If he turns out easy, you've handed back a slot on your busiest day.
• Price. Give a from price and settle it once you've seen the coat. Fair, and hard to walk back: whatever number came out of your mouth first is the number they heard, and they'll compare next visit's invoice to it.
• The slot. New dogs arrive as a request rather than a confirmation, so nothing is real until you've looked at it. You get the last word, and you pay for it with friction at the exact moment they're deciding between you and the shop down the road.

There's no version where you pay nothing. Taking a stranger's dog on a stranger's description, at a regular's price, in a regular's slot, is also a decision — it just doesn't feel like one until Saturday.

The form is only as good as the owner's idea of matted

The owner filling in your booking form isn't lying to you. Brushed regularly means brushed, to them. Fine with clippers means fine when the beard trimmer is out in the lounge room. Vaccination and vet details you can check against a document; coat condition and how the dog handles being handled, you can't, because the person answering has one dog to compare against and you've had thousands through your hands.

That's not a reason to ask less. The questions catch the things you cannot afford to discover at ten past ten: a coat that's pelted rather than knotty, a dog that has never been groomed by anyone, a senior with a heart condition, a bite history someone would rather not mention. Those answers change what you book, so they're worth the friction. It's the small stuff you should stop treating as fact.

Where should a first-time dog go in your day?

Early, if you want room to be wrong, and last if you'd rather absorb it yourself. Both hold up. A new dog at nine gives you the rest of the day to swallow an overrun, and if the coat is worse than booked you're ringing the owner at a civilised hour instead of during their meeting. A new dog at the end of the day can't cascade into anybody else's pickup, and the whole cost of being wrong lands on you, in an hour you hadn't planned to work.

The place a first-timer doesn't belong is the middle of a full day with a hard pickup sitting behind him.

What the first visit owes the second

This is the part that decides whether you ever get the easy version of this booking. A dog becomes a regular the moment his last groom left something behind, and that has to happen while he's still in front of you at pickup. Not that night, and not "I'll remember him", because by Tuesday you've done eleven more dogs.

Six things worth writing down on a first groom, none of which a form could have told you:

• What it actually took. Real minutes on the table, not the minutes you booked. This is the number that prices and schedules every groom he ever has with you.
• The coat you found. Not the coat that was described. Include how long since his last groom, if you got it out of the owner.
• Where he made it hard. Feet, face, nails, the dryer, standing up at all. A dog who's fine except for back feet is a completely different booking to a dog who's fine except for everything.
• What you had to change. If they asked for a teddy and the coat only gave you a short all-over, write down why. It's the whole conversation you'll otherwise have again in six weeks.
• What the owner said at pickup. The "next time could you leave the ears" is the brief for the second groom, and it evaporates before you've swept up.
• Whether he'd been groomed before, and how that went. A first-time dog for you and a first-time dog full stop are two different animals on the table.

Do that and the second booking is a regular's booking, taken with a file. Skip it and you can groom the same dog four times and still be guessing at the fifth.

Keep reading

• Forms — where the questions live and when they're put in front of a customer.
• Who gets to put a dog in your diary? — whether a new dog should be able to confirm a slot at all.
• Breed-specific service times, which is what you're guessing at on a first visit.
• Seglo for pet grooming.