The order you run the dogs in decides how many fit

Four o'clock. The spaniel you bathed at two is still under the dryer, the dog booked for four is in a crate waiting for a bath that has nowhere to happen, and its owner's coming at five.

Nothing on that list was booked wrong. Every dog got the time it needed. They got it in an order that put both of the slow ones in the same part of the afternoon.

Most days take their order from somewhere else. Whoever booked first, whoever arrived first, whoever said they were in a hurry. Changing that costs nothing: no new price, no new service, no extra pair of hands. It's the one thing you can fix tonight and feel tomorrow.

Where the queue actually forms

Your hands are on the dog for part of the job. The bath wants you, the finishing work wants you, and the drying mostly wants a machine and a bit of watching. So two things run out during a full day, and they're different things: your hands, and the equipment those unattended stretches happen in.

The real decision is which dog goes into the bath and the dryer first, because that's the part of the day you can't run twice at once. A dog under the dryer is holding a machine the next dog needs before it can start anything. Miss that and you get the four o'clock jam: two dogs wanting the same box, one of them standing in a crate wet.

Both ways of leaning cost you something. Pack the shared gear tight and there's room for another dog, and one late drop-off breaks the chain for the rest of the day. Leave slack in it and the day survives almost anything, and some afternoons you'll finish early with an empty dryer and a client you turned away that morning.

Should the longest dry go first?

Usually, yes. The dog that takes forever to dry belongs in the first bath of the day, because a long dry that starts late finishes on its own, after everything else is done and waiting on it. Start it early and it runs in the background while you take a small dog from start to finish. Start it at three and you're standing next to a dryer at six with nothing left to do but that.

The exception is the dog that's slow at both ends. If your longest dry is also your longest table job, putting it first stacks the two biggest unknowns of the day into the same morning, and everything behind them rides on one dog behaving. Split them up. Longest dry into the first bath, hardest finish second or third, so a bad surprise has an ordinary dog behind it to soak up the difference.

The unknown dog: first, or last?

The new client, the coat nobody in the shop has seen, the "he's a bit matted" that could mean anything. You can't tell what it is until it's on the table, and where you put it decides who pays for you guessing wrong.

First thing, and you've got a whole day in front of you to absorb an overrun, plus you're fresh for the worst job on the list. You're also betting the entire running order on the one dog you know least about. If it turns into a strip you didn't book, every dog behind it slides, and you spend the afternoon on the phone.

Last thing, and an overrun only costs your own evening. Nobody waits, nobody gets a call. You're also doing the hardest job of the day tired, and if the coat's worse than booked there's no room left to ring the owner and talk about a different groom.

Second is the better answer more often than either of them. One dog you could do with your eyes shut, so you start on time. Then the unknown, with hours of day still behind it.

Batching the same coat, up to a point

Two shave-downs back to back is one blade setup and one frame of mind, and it beats alternating them with hand-scissored trims all morning. Three heavy double coats back to back is three long dries stacked into one window, and the dryer turns into a wall the whole afternoon runs at. Batch the jobs that share a setup. Spread the jobs that share a machine.

What the order costs the dog

Crate time is the currency you're spending when you tighten a day up. Every bit of slack you take out of the machines means somebody waits longer wet, or waits longer dry before they go home, and none of that shows up anywhere in the day's takings.

Which is why some dogs come out of the sequence entirely. The senior who starts panting the moment the door shuts, the puppy on its second ever visit, the one who's been fine for a year and isn't today. Those go in and out as fast as you can move them, even when it costs you the slot. There's a selfish version of that too: a dog who's had enough of waiting grooms slower than the same dog an hour earlier, so you pay for the wait either way, at the table instead of in the crate.

Laying out tomorrow before you go home

Ten minutes with tomorrow's list, in this order:

1. Mark the fixed points first. The dog dropped off on someone's way to work, the one whose owner can only collect at five. Those aren't yours to move, and everything else fills in around them.
2. Sort what's left by drying time. Booking time tells you nothing about how long a coat holds water, and you already know which ones are slow.
3. Slowest dry into the first bath. It's running while you work on something else, which is the entire point of doing this.
4. Unknown dog second. On time at the start, hours of day left behind it.
5. Check no two long dries land in the same hour. If they do, move whichever one has the later pickup.
6. Pull anything anxious out of the sequence and put it wherever it can be in and out quickest.
7. Leave the last hour lighter than you could fill it. Everything that went wrong earlier arrives there.

None of that adds a dog to the list by itself. It stops the day losing one.

Keep reading

• How long a groom actually takes. The lengths a running order is built out of.
• Fixed times or drop-off windows. How much room you have to move a dog once it's in the building.
• Rooms, equipment and pools. Telling the schedule that the bath and the dryer exist.
• Seglo for pet grooming.