How to choose a dog groomer in Hinckley and Earl Shilton

Dog grooming is unregulated in the UK, so the checking is on you. This directory covers 37 groomers across two areas: Hinckley & Burbage (LE10, 19 businesses) and Earl Shilton & Barwell (LE9, 18 businesses), the latter reaching out to Kirby Muxloe, Stoney Stanton, Sapcote, Desford and Broughton Astley, all inside the LE9 postcode district. National chain branches, including a Pets at Home / The Groom Room salon on Hawley Road in Hinckley, are excluded throughout this directory, as is standard across the network.

Check how well the business is documented

Of the 37 businesses listed, 12 were confirmed from a working website or business page plus at least one other independent source (marked high confidence). Thirteen are medium confidence, usually meaning the details come from a directory listing, a Facebook page, or a phone number filled in independently rather than the business's own working site. Twelve are low confidence: Nose 2 Tail Dog Grooming by Sarah, Groomobile, Jeans Poodle Parlour, Pawsitively Pampered, Dusty's Dog Grooming, Em's Scruffy Pup's, Country View Grooming, Paws & Pose Dog Grooming Parlour, Smart Pupz Grooming, Silhouette Mobile Dog & Cat Grooming Services, Whiskers & Paws and Desford Dog Grooming. Each of these carries a note that the details are from search results only and should be confirmed by phone before booking. Two further records, Doggy Daycare at the Willows and Hinckley Pets in Home, carry the same confirm-by-phone note despite a higher confidence level, because their own website couldn't be reached, or a second source gives a different address for the same phone number (see below).

Two records left out

All Breeds Dog Grooming, on Grewcocks Place in Earl Shilton, is left out of this directory because no phone number could be confirmed for it on any source checked, and this network doesn't publish a business without a way to reach it. Canine Cottage Country Retreat, on Sapcote Road in Burbage, is also left out: its name and the way it's listed elsewhere point to a boarding or retreat business, and no website or independent source could confirm that dog grooming is actually one of its services.

Address and phone conflicts worth knowing about

Ruff To Royal in Barwell has two phone numbers on record, a landline and a mobile, for the same address; try the landline first and the mobile if it doesn't connect. Hinckley Pets in Home's Keats Lane, Earl Shilton address is independently confirmed on more than one source, but a separate source gives a different address entirely for the same phone number, so it's worth confirming you have the right location before a visit. Country View Grooming, on King Richards Hill in Earl Shilton, sits close to where All Breeds Dog Grooming is listed under a different name a short walk away on Grewcocks Place; whether these are two separate businesses or one business known by two names on different sources isn't confirmed, so Country View Grooming is listed here on its own, with All Breeds Dog Grooming left out for lack of a phone number as above.

Qualifications

City & Guilds training is cited by several businesses here: Growlers' Jeanette, Lola's Professional Dog Grooming's groomer (also an accredited canine first responder), Cloud K9 Professional Grooming's Level 3 qualified team, and Paws & Refresh Dog Grooming's Helen, who holds a City & Guilds Level 3 Diploma in Dog Grooming. Doggie Dazzlers Dog Grooming's Karen holds an iPET Level 3 diploma including canine first aid; Doggy Deluxe's Olivia holds an OCN Level 3 qualification with canine first aid; and Scruffy to Fluffy's Ria holds a Level 2 dog grooming qualification while training towards Level 3. Melanie's Dog Grooming is run by Melanie Fostervold, with 30 years in the pet industry across the UK and the USA and 20 of those spent grooming. Ask for the qualification by name if it matters to you.

One-to-one and home-based setups

Most of the businesses in this directory work from a home rather than a shopfront salon, seeing one dog at a time: Paws 4 Heidi, Doggie Dazzlers Dog Grooming, Woof Around The Edges, Billy Jane's Dog Grooming, Scruffy to Fluffy, Melanie's Dog Grooming and Ben & Jenny's Dog Grooming (working from a purpose-built log cabin salon in a Stoney Stanton garden) all describe a one-to-one or home-based format. If a calm, single-appointment setting matters for a nervous dog, these are worth asking about directly.

Mobile groomers

Four of the 37 businesses here work from a van rather than a fixed salon: Doggyland Mobile Dog Grooming, which covers Hinckley, Barwell, Earl Shilton, Burbage and a long list of surrounding villages; Doggy Deluxe, a self-contained unit based in Broughton Astley covering Leicester, Lutterworth, Hinckley, Nuneaton and Rugby; Silhouette Mobile Dog & Cat Grooming Services, based in Barwell; and Em's Scruffy Pup's, whose Hinckley phone number is the only clue to its base, since its own coverage list stretches as far as Broughton Astley, Blaby, Enderby, Lutterworth and Wigston without naming a fixed town. Confirm your address is covered before booking any of the four.

Cats as well as dogs

Cloud K9 Professional Grooming and Silhouette Mobile Dog & Cat Grooming Services both groom cats alongside dogs. Everyone else in this directory is confirmed for dog grooming only.

Reviews

17 of the 36 groomers listed here show a Google rating, taken from the business's own Google profile and linked from the listing; the others have no rating from a source this directory can link to. One, Scruffy to Fluffy, has a booking profile on an accepted platform, but it shows no reviews yet since the salon only recently opened. Star ratings are visible for a number of these businesses on other sites, but none could be traced back to Google, Trustpilot, Fresha, Booksy or Yelp, so none is shown here; ask to see recent work or a reference instead of relying on a rating you can't check yourself.

Where they are, and where they're thin

Coverage is close to even between the two areas: 19 businesses in Hinckley & Burbage against 18 in Earl Shilton & Barwell, with the latter's total spread out across Earl Shilton, Barwell and the villages of Kirby Muxloe, Stoney Stanton, Sapcote, Desford and Broughton Astley rather than concentrated in one town. Burbage itself accounts for a large share of the Hinckley & Burbage side, with Growlers, Lola's Professional Dog Grooming, Jeans Poodle Parlour and Billy Jane's Dog Grooming all based there. If you're in one of the smaller LE9 villages without a groomer of its own, one of the mobile operators above may be a better first call than travelling into Earl Shilton or Barwell.