The Why Behind the School
The WPGA wasn’t built to fit the grooming industry; it was built to change it.
It started in a grooming school classroom in the 90s, fifteen minutes on first aid, an AKC Breed Standard book, and no real explanation of why any of it mattered.
I remember sitting there thinking, “This can’t be it.”
Coming from an equestrian background, I was used to education built on theory, anatomy, and safety. You didn’t just do something; you understood why before you touched an animal. But in grooming, that depth didn’t exist. It was all about how fast you could finish and how neat the haircut looked. The why, the reason behind every choice we make with an animal, was missing.
When I graduated, the jobs were everywhere. But the shops were dirty, unregulated, and focused only on the “pretty haircut.” I knew right then I couldn’t work for anyone else. Their standards weren’t mine.
I spent years grooming, learning, observing, and realizing that education in our industry was stuck in the past. There was no structure, no curriculum, no system that mirrored the rigor of other trades. No one asked why.
By 2008, I began working with other groomers and testing what true education could look like, but I quickly learned that teaching is a skill of its own. It requires patience, reflection, and humility. It took years to get good at it.
When The Whole Pet Grooming Academy officially opened on February 17, 2015, it wasn’t because I wanted another business. It was because I needed to build something different. A space where we didn’t just teach “how,” but connected every skill to purpose, safety, health, behavior, and compassion.
The three years before that day were filled with research, compliance meetings, inspections, and building a handbook from scratch. It wasn’t glamorous; it was late nights, state paperwork, and the constant fear that one missed detail could derail it all. But it mattered, because I wanted to prove that grooming education could be real. That it could be DOE-approved, internationally recognized, and built to last.
And it worked.
Our small, intimate classroom model, one student, one teacher, allowed space for both theory and practice. It was everything I had wished for as a student decades earlier. We taught more than “pretty.” We taught purpose.
Over time, the WPGA evolved, moving fully online to reach more students while maintaining the same standards and structure. Not because the world got easier, but because education had to. What never changed was the heart behind it: compassion first, knowledge second, haircut last.
People often think running a school is like running a grooming shop. It isn’t. It’s an entirely different world, filled with compliance, state and federal oversight, and constant pressure to meet next-to-impossible expectations at times. The industry still expects instant results, six-week miracles, and gold-star graduates. But real education takes time. It takes structure. And it takes courage to do it the right way.
There were moments I almost quit, times when it felt like the world was waiting for the school to fail, and some who still are. But that will only continue to fuel me to keep going. Because what we’re building isn’t just a school. It’s a movement toward better, safer, more educated grooming.
Looking back, I realize this journey was never just about teaching others; it was about learning who I am when the odds are stacked high. It taught me patience. It taught me persistence. And it reminded me that real change is never convenient, it’s built one standard, one student, one “why” at a time.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:
Dreams built on purpose don’t fade; they evolve.
Together, we’ll keep moving education forward, for the animals, the students who embrace formal education, and the future of the grooming industry.
And if you have a vision powerful enough to raise the bar, hold onto it. The industry doesn’t need more noise. It needs more why.