A decade of dogs, a six-year love affair with Carlton North, and absolutely no regrets.
Ten years. One decade. 3,650 days of double coats, deshedding, and dogs who were absolutely fine right up until the moment they weren’t.
Spitz Groom turns ten this year, and six of those years have been spent in our permanent home in Carlton North, Melbourne. We moved in, hung up our slicker brushes, and never looked back. (Mostly because looking back means seeing how much Samoyed fur is on the floor.)
We thought this milestone deserved a moment. A small celebration. A brief reflection on how far we’ve come, and a gentle acknowledgment that the dog hair has, in fact, become load-bearing at this point.
Ten Years Ago
Rebecca Oberin started Spitz Groom with a vision, a deep love of double-coated breeds, and the quiet but firm conviction that Melbourne’s dogs deserved better.
Better grooming. Better handling. Better understanding of what a double coat actually is and why you absolutely should not shave it off just because summer is coming.
The industry said: volume is the goal. Rebecca said: no thank you, I’ll take quality. And then she built a salon around that idea and proved it worked.
Ten years later, clients travel from across Victoria and interstate. For a groom. That’s not nothing. That’s everything.
Six Years in Carlton North
Four years in, we found our permanent home, and Carlton North, we have to say, has been a very good fit.
It’s the kind of suburb that appreciates a well-groomed dog. Where people know their oat milk from their regular milk, take their dogs everywhere, and will absolutely stop you on the street to ask what breed that fluffy white cloud is. (It’s a Japanese Spitz. It always is.)
Our salon on was designed from the ground up, in collaboration with animal behaviourist Nicola Gunton, to be a place where dogs actually want to be. Calm. Considered. Stress-free.
Six years in, it still feels like the right place. The neighbourhood has grown around us. The dogs keep coming. The fur keeps accumulating.
What Ten Years Looks Like
In ten years, Spitz Groom has:
- Groomed an absolutely unreasonable number of Samoyeds, Japanese Spitz, Pomeranians, Huskies, and Golden Retrievers (not to mention the Dachshund, Poodles and the countless other breeds).
- Convinced hundreds of owners that no, you really should not shave your double-coated dog, and yes, we know it’s hot, and no, it doesn’t help.
- Turned genuinely terrified dogs into dogs who trot through the front door like they own the place. (Or throw themselves at our front door!)
- Built a retail boutique stocked with the tools and products we actually use and believe in.
- Educated an entire community of dog owners on how to brush properly, which tools to use, and why the $12 brush from the supermarket is not doing what they think it’s doing.
- Sent more dogs home looking like show champions than we can count.
Not bad for a salon that started with one woman, a clear vision, and a healthy disregard for the way things had always been done.
Here’s to What’s Next
Ten years in, the standard hasn’t dropped. The waitlist is real. The care is the same as it was on day one, possibly better, because we never stop learning.
To every client who has trusted us with their dog: thank you. Genuinely. You are the reason this place exists and the reason it keeps getting better.
To the dogs: you are all very good. Even the ones who disagreed with us about the nail trim.
And to Carlton North Community: thanks for having us. We plan to stay.
Spitz Groom is a specialist dog grooming salon and boutique in Carlton North, Melbourne. Ten years of double-coated breed expertise, fear-free grooming, and a truly impressive amount of accumulated fur. Book a consultation or join our waitlist at spitzgroom.com.au