Horse Tail Trails

There’s a cozy trailer park just off of State Road 76, (the road from Espanola to Chimayo,) tucked behind a wooden fence and fairly unnoticeable unless one knows it’s there.  A bright orange sign in the shape of a dog marks the place.  “You can’t live in this trailer park unless you have a pet and an old trailer,” park and business owner Carol Taschek (right) jokes.  The vine-covered final trailer on the right houses Thunderberry Dog Grooming, a business she has been running for 25 years. 

“I was camping up in Colorado with a friend of mine,” Taschek explains how her journey to being a dog groomer began, “And I was reading the Rocky Mountian News by the camp fire, and I saw an ad for the Colorado School of Dog Grooming.  I said, oh, I’d like to do that.”  She is most certainly an animal person and always has been.  Taschek says regarding the difference between working with animals and working with people, “They’re not manipulative.  They don’t try to cheat you, they don’t swear.  Sometimes they do bite.  They’re more open and honest than people.”  With a smile, she adds, “People are just more difficult to get along with.”

When asked what advice she has for people who would like to groom their own pets, Taschek immediately gets down to business and speaks very professionally.  “Get an expensive pair of clippers.  I always tell people that, don’t go for those cheesy ones…  They’ll cost you around $100.  Get a book.  And just go for it.  You might wanna, before you buy the clippers and stuff, come to the groomer once and see what it’s like.”  She says that some people come in to see her work and when they see the effort that goes into it or how the fur gets everywhere, they opt to pay her to groom the animal rather than attempt it themselves.  As she explains all of this, the table in front of her is littered with clumps of fur and the little white poodle she had been working on is wiggling all about with excitement, as if it knows exactly what is being said and is demonstrating the point.  “It’s kind of a dirty job,” Taschek nods.

Of course there is an art to dog grooming.  There are tricks for each breed and build of animal.  The key is knowing the right hair style for the kind of dog.  More fluff may be left on a skinnier dog, while dogs with short legs get more of the underbelly hair trimmed to make them not look so squat.  All the same, Taschek says that if someone wants to try dog grooming, they should go ahead and groom their dog.  She laughingly states that, if you mess up a self-grooming job, the dog doesn’t really care anyway.

Some grooming styles are more unusual than others, with poofs and strategically shaved places.  “Some of them are bizarre for the poodles.  Like you see in the dog shows,” Taschek says.  While it’s not a dog show style she was referring to, she has given a poodle a mohawk before.  She also has a customer who uses food coloring to dye the tails of their two dogs green and pink.  This particular customer does the dye themselves, but Taschek is not opposed to such a job.  “They’re so cute, I mean I just love it...  Nobody’s asked me to do that.  I know that in the groomer magazines it’s the style and stuff.  If people asked me, I’d get the stuff to do it.  It makes me laugh.”  Such a request wouldn’t be the first time she’s dyed a dog either.  “Some years ago there were these two twins in town,” she explains, “They came and they wanted me to carve ‘twins’ on their dog, on each side, and dye it red, just using, you know, food coloring.”  The possibilities are vast in the world of dog grooming, but such examples are few and far between.  “Mostly they’re pretty basic.  Most of the people want basic cuts.”

Living with Taschek on her property is an array of different pets.  “I guess they’re pets,” she remarks about the caged sparrows, which are rescues who are too damaged to survive in the wild, “They live here and I feed them anyway.”  In addition to the six rehabilitation sparrows, she has six canaries, two parrots, three chickens, a ginny hen, seven indoor cats, two dogs, a horse, and about thirty pigeons. 

Dogs and cats may be the main focus of her grooming business, but her property serves multiple purposes for animals.  She works with the Wildlife Center and Santa Fe Raptors, using her home as a place to rehabilitate injured birds and prepare them for release into the wild again.  She is currently housing a humming bird over the winter, as well as two woodpeckers and a flicker.  There is a flight cage in the back yard for these birds.  “After they get to a certain point, they need to build up their muscles,” Taschek explains. 

The small opening room of the flight cage serves as the pigeon house, where they nest and sleep at night.  Some of the pigeons that live here were gifted to Taschek by a friend.  They are a breed called “racing pigeons,” which have white feathers and are larger than the wild ones.  “I don’t race them, I just feed them,” Taschek smiles.  “Most of the white pigeons that I inherited picked black mates.”  The offspring of the birds will get progressively darker, which is better camouflage for them.  In fact, there are a couple of chicks inside a nest in the pigeon house (left).  “They look like dinosaurs,” Taschek remarks, holding up a half bald little chick with an almost disproportionately large beak.

The flight cage itself is a strong mesh over a doomed metal frame.  There are trees and plants inside, all of which are currently dormant for the winter, but it is clearly a place that would be stunning in summertime.  As soon as Taschek steps inside the cage, a beautiful woodpecker with a red crest (right) attempts to fly from a tree and falls with relative grace to the ground.  As he climbs back up the side of the tree as if nothing happened, Tascheck says he is doing much better.  He is building up his wing muscles after his injury and it will take him some time in the flight cage before he will be ready to be released to the wild again.  “They don’t really see anybody but me, so they stay very wild.  When it’s time to go, then I’ll just open this up,” she motions overhead at the mesh rooftop, “And away they’ll go.  Hopefully they’ll stay around.”  The rehabilitating birds currently live off of a mixture of peanut butter, fruits, cat food and vitamins that Taschek puts on the trees for them every day.

Between her own pets, the grooming business, and the rescue birds, it seems like Taschek always has something to do.  “My life is pretty boring basically,” she tries to claim as she heads back inside, greeted by the chirping of her canaries.  She does love working with all the animals and recommends that, if one has the time and the space, they should volunteer with the Wildlife Center and Santa Fe Raptors as well.  More people are always needed.

If you have a specific style in mind for your pet, Taschek advises that people bring in pictures.  If someone wants a special shampoo used on their dog, they can bring that themselves as well.  “This one’s not real cheap,” she says as she indicates to a gallon container of pet shampoo, “It’s just good and it’s simple.  It’s not tested on animals.”  She pauses, then laughs, “Except I test it on animals every day.”  She does groom cats, but the owner must be present for the grooming.  Strictly fur styling for the kitties, no bathing, for obvious reasons.

So how much does a styling job at Thunderberry Dog Grooming cost?  $30.  “Almost every dog is $30.  That’s the max, no matter how rotten or hard.  Some dogs are less, some real simple.  Like this little munchkin here,” she points to a poodle in the kennel, “He doesn’t require much, so he’s less.  $30’s the max.  That includes tax.  I’m not very oriented towards money.  As long as I can feed everybody, I’m happy.”

 

Thunderberry Dog Grooming can be found in our business directory:  Click Here