ake a moment to remember back (if you are as old as me) or imagine back to a time long gone when there was no internet, no cell phones, no social media, no grooming trade shows or competitions, no state associations, few grooming schools, and really no way for us to talk to each other, teach each other or learn from each other. All reading material was printed in books and all human conversations happened on landline phones or in person. That is the grooming industry I entered in the early-mid 1980s.Most groomers worked for cash, and many did not report their business income as legally required. Referrals often came from our local veterinarian. We used horribly poisonous flea dips, hot oil treatments and had other ill-informed practices that we thankfully have outgrown.
At a small table in the corner at the first All American Grooming Show I attended in the mid-1980s, sat Sally Liddick and Gwen Shelly. They were selling “Groom-O-Grams” and their other early publications. Sally was a Pennsylvania groomer with a lot of clients who kept asking her the same questions all the time. So rather than constantly repeat her explanations to them, starting in the late 1970s, Sally had been printing up Groom-O-Grams just for her clients.
By 1984 Sally approached her lifelong friend and fellow Pennsylvanian Gwen Shelly to help her in the growing business. They had been friends for decades and had known each other since first grade in elementary school. Both now adults, married and neighbors, Gwen teamed up with Sally to handle the growing demands of her business. They got advertisers and subscribers and were off and running, eventually helping groomers with other printed materials such as kennel clip cards and file cards for client recordkeeping.
Gwen said that early on the business interfered so much with Sally’s grooming business that Sally was going to give it all up. But she had one advertiser in her earliest Groom-O-Grams that was thrilled about the reach that it gave their business in an industry that had almost no means of sharing information. It was the advertisers, Gwen reported, that pressed Sally not to give up the publication.
Gwen shared that it was not easy to build the business at first, especially as a women-owned businesses. Even though most groomers were women, national business owners almost never were. And some printers did not even want to work with them because of this.
Sally was a very forward thinker and did not give up. She wanted to also help move the grooming industry to be more independent and business-like, so their company needed a name. Gwen told me the story of Sally looking out the window at a lovely nearby tree and admiring its bark. She thought of naming the company “Barkley,” but when she looked it up, she saw that name was taken. So, she changed the spelling of the final part of the name and Barkleigh Productions was established as a company.
By the time that Sally Liddick passed in 2012, she had lived to see her vision of a nationwide grooming community realized, where professionalism, good business practices, education and sharing were everywhere in our industry. Sally’s name lives on though, as it’s often heard in the “Sally Breaks” that take place during grooming contests. The judging was so long and tedious in the early days of competition that dogs were often standing on the tables for hours. Sally insisted that the dogs needed a break to go outside, and so Sally Breaks were instituted.
So from me and all other groomers, we offer a heartfelt thank you to Sally and Gwen, and all who worked to build a real community in this industry we love, for bringing groomers together through inspiring trade shows and education, and through this world-class magazine, page by page.