Forty-five gentle minutes that decide the next fifteen years of grooming. Short, sweet, treat-heavy — and always ending on a win.
Here's a secret from the grooming table: almost every "difficult" adult dog we meet learned to fear grooming at their very first appointment. A loud salon, a rushed schedule, a full haircut forced on a sixteen-week-old — and a decade of wrestling matches is booked. The fix is embarrassingly simple. Start early, go slow, and make the first visit feel like the best field trip of their tiny life.
That's exactly what this appointment is. Your puppy gets the studio to themselves: a warm, shallow bath, a whisper-speed introduction to the dryer, a soft brush, a nail-tip trim, and — only if they're loving it — a light tidy around the face, feet and sanitary areas. Every step is paired with treats and praise. Any step they're not ready for gets skipped without ceremony. We always end on a win.
Got a pup under six months? Lock in their first visit
Between roughly 8 and 16 weeks, puppies file every new experience into "normal" or "scary" — and the folder mostly locks afterward. A puppy who hears a high-velocity dryer at low speed while licking peanut butter at 15 weeks simply doesn't develop dryer panic at 2 years. For coated breeds it's even more practical: doodles, shih tzus, yorkies and havanese all swap their puppy fluff for a denser adult coat around 8–14 months, and that transition mats viciously. Puppies who already know the table, the brush and the dryer cruise through it. Puppies meeting all three for the first time during coat change have a much harder week.
One honest note: this visit is for puppies under six months. Older first-timers are absolutely welcome at Rally too — we just plan their introduction differently. Mention it in the booking form and we'll take it from there.
Book the intro visit — we confirm every booking by text within 2 hours.
One gentle visit now saves a hundred stressful ones later. We confirm by text within 2 hours.