Black Dog Pet Grooming Opens in Little Falls, Bringing Full-Service Grooming Downtown

LITTLE FALLS – A new storefront has opened downtown, offering full-service dog and cat grooming and giving Little Falls its first dedicated pet salon in years.

Black Dog Pet Grooming is owned and operated by Kacey Daley, who grew up around animals and spent years building her grooming career before deciding to strike out on her own.

Daley said animals have been part of her life since childhood. She helped her mother with grooming during summer vacations, apprenticed at a stable, and got involved with 4-H and Girl Scouts along the way.

Her mother, who runs a grooming business out of her home in Dolgeville (Dawn’s Dogs), also served as the villages’s dog control officer and worked with local spay-and-neuter programs, giving Daley an early education in the business, legal, and animal-welfare sides of the trade.

Even so, Daley said opening her own shop was never part of a childhood plan. After high school, she studied environmental science in college but continued grooming on the side to help pay for it.

When the pandemic sent her back home, she picked grooming back up and eventually took a job at PetSmart in New Hartford, where she spent six years and rose into a training and oversight role.

“It literally found me, and I liked it,” Daley said of grooming. “I was good at it, so I kind of just went with it.”

Burned out after years at the corporate chain, Daley began working alongside her mother in Dolgeville, an arrangement both had once ruled out.

The transition from PetSmart’s strict procedures to the freedom of a small, home-based operation took some adjustment, she said, but her mother gradually gave her room to grow, starting with simple trims before working up to full haircuts at her own pace.

Daley said she had been eyeing a move to Little Falls for roughly two years, having looked at several storefronts that never quite worked out.

A steady stream of clients from the Little Falls area, combined with a rough winter commute over the hill between the two towns, made the case for relocating.

Daley said the drive has cost the business money and appointments during bad weather, and ongoing road construction near the Dolgeville location has made things worse, occasionally leaving clients lost or stuck on detours.

The new Little Falls location solves both problems, she said, while putting the business closer to a client base that had already been shifting away from Dolgeville.

Daley described Black Dog’s pricing as solidly middle-of-the-road. “I don’t consider us super high-end, but I don’t consider us super low-end,” she said.

“I try to get a good quality product for everybody, while still staying within a range where people can afford.”

Grooming appointments run Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with front-of-house salon hours Wednesday through Friday from 12:30 to 5 p.m.

Because grooming is done one dog at a time, with each appointment lasting up to two and a half hours, all visits are by reservation.

Daley’s mother, who owns Dawn’s Dogs and has run her Dolgeville operation for 16 years, has now opened a second location with her daughter and grooms in Little Falls on Thursdays, Fridays, and most Saturdays.

Response from the community has been strong, Daley said, including from longtime clients who now have a shorter trip and from customers of a recently retired Mohawk-area groomer who have been looking for a new salon.

Black Dog Pet Grooming will celebrate its opening with a ribbon-cutting and open house on Sunday, October 18, starting around 11 a.m. Daley said the event will include refreshments for both dogs and their owners, along with pet merchandise.

To find out more, visit their Facebook page, email blackdogpetgrooming26@gmail.com, or call 315-940-6162.