It takes a very balanced energy to deal with animals. Like the one given by Dirce Fernández Do Santos, who has been working with them for decades. This pet care professional, from East Timor, had her first dog grooming salon 25 years ago at the Barceló Market in Madrid. He still has some of his clients from then, whom he has «brought» to Contigo Cares, in the Corte Inglés de Castellana, the beauty center for dogs and cats where he works, and where he receives EL PAÍS on a Friday morning in February. Every day he shares the space of the premises – open in December 2023 – with the pets that arrive and with two of his former students. They are Renzo Rodríguez Polanco, with 19 years of experience with pets, and María Teresa Morales Urbiola (Tete), a lover of animals, to whom, between baths and hair drying, she dedicates all kinds of compliments and compliments. The team is completed by the only veterinarian they have «at the moment», Elena Aguado Flor, who from the reception does the relevant health checks for pets that arrive for the first time or, as they call it, «the eight-step checklist.» “I’m not here every day,” he explains, “but if I’m there at the time of opening the file, I look at the animal’s eyes, ears, hair, skin and general condition and ask the owners if they have any problems.” From there, they go to the hairdresser.
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The owners—or guardians, as those who also talk about families with pets prefer—are the same ones the cosmetics industry dreams of while it sharpens its nails. When their purchasing power allows it, these people form the market niche that pet beauty brands are betting heavily on. [belleza para mascotas]which has experienced global growth of 5.7% in 2025, according to data from luxury pet accessories firm Nina Woof. In Spain alone, where 49% of families already have a pet (there are 28 million in homes), this market is experiencing a boom, with more than 3,000 million euros invested in 2025, according to the Spanish Network for the Identification of Companion Animals (REIAC). In 2026, furthermore, the trend is expected to skyrocket.Elena, a veterinarian at Contigo Cares, at the reception of the center, examining a ‘dachshund’ named ‘Clark’. Víctor SanjuanAt Contigo Cares in Madrid – boosted by this boom, they will soon expand to the Corte Inglés in Avilés and Valladolid -, it is not a very busy morning. Occupying just a third of the floor where the entire range of products and accessories of the Pet Division of the department store is displayed – such as feed, carts with carriers, British-style harnesses and boots for walking the dog -, the dog grooming salon led by Dirce has received two illustrious clients first thing in the morning. They are Clark, an alert 11-month-old dachshund whose owner has left him to take a relaxing bath, and Lion, an impressive gray Maine Coon cat waiting inside his carrier, where you can already sense the size he will display when he comes out. The machinery of the hairdressing team works like a clock. They are not in a hurry, they know that they can spend between an hour and an hour and a half attending to each animal, but they cannot indulge in spontaneity either: cat and dog should not coincide in the same room and, on any other day without the press snooping, they would not even smell each other. 
Says, from Contigo Cares, while combing ‘Lion’, a Maine Coon cat that usually visits the center. Víctor SanjuanThe day’s routine will be the same for both of them. There will be a spa bath and a subsequent drying session. Kind of a basic package. They both go to the center since they were puppies, the only way they end up liking the visit to the groomer. Those who start going later, Tete points out, end up accepting it, but only that: “The joke [truco] «It’s getting them used to it from a young age.» While they entertain themselves by combing Lion’s beautiful fur, the two hairdressers talk about their experiences with felines, not always accepted in beauty centers due to their special character. «I never say no, I always try,» says the experienced Dirce: «First I have an interview with the owner; Then two or three minutes with the cat are enough for me to know if it is going to let me treat it or not,» she continues. They also have rules: just as only one of them can handle dogs, with felines they always work in pairs: «And never with the cat looking towards you, for protection,» warns the veteran, with Lion reflecting in the glass in front of her: «The mirror is important, because that way the cat sees you, but doesn’t look at you.» Tete snaps her fingers, as if marking a rhythm: «With the cats we go quickly and quietly.» In the spa area – a fish tank visible to everyone – Renzo manages alone to put Clark in the water – «not too cold or too hot» -, soap him and massage him, while the lights inside the bathtub alternate colors: «The red one helps with skin problems and the blue one calms them down, relaxes them; The purple light is to seal wounds, if it has any it helps it heal,» explains the groomer about the container’s chromotherapy system. Inside, the dachshund remains calm: «It’s usually like this. They can get aggressive if the owner is there, because the fish tank is soundproof: they don’t hear him, but they do see him; “We recommend that you stand back a little, so that there is no eye contact.”
‘Clark’, 11 months old, has been going to dog grooming since he was a puppy. Víctor SanjuanIn this “low-stress hair salon,” as Dirce defines it, the owners pay, but they are not necessarily right. «Clients are demanding, but most do not take good care of the dogs at home; some bring them in with their hair full of knots and want us to leave them pompous, but it is impossible. If you haven’t groomed your dog in three months, what do you want me to do?» he criticizes. Their solution is simple and irrefutable: “We charge extra for knots and so they think twice.” When it comes to owners/guardians, there is everything. «We have ramps throughout the house. The dachshunds are in danger of having their spines damaged and this way we prevent them from jumping too much,» Marta, “owner and mother” of Clark and Copito, a seven-year-old Westie dog who also takes to Contigo Care, says on the phone. For this 44-year-old administrative officer living in Madrid, «the treatment given to our dogs in the Pelus is very important; you want to have the security and guarantee that the dog is comfortable and calm.» 
Marta and ‘Clark’, photographed at El Corte Inglés in Castellana, where the Contigo Cares center is located. Víctor Sanjuan Unlike those who limit the well-being of their pets to a beauty center, Marta and her husband prolong the care of their dogs at home: «He carries their weight very closely, he feeds them once in the morning and once at night and weighs the food; we give them raw carrots for their hair and Vaseline on their pads and on the nose, so that their legs and nose do not crack. Each dog has its own specific care. Added to that is that both Clark and Copito go to a “kindergarten”: “It’s true that we spend a lot, about 500 euros a month more or less between the two of us,” adds Marta headlong. At Contigo Cares, a basic treatment—bath, nail trimming, emptying of anal glands and ear cleaning—for a dog weighing about eight kilos costs about 56 euros; if it is a small dog, 36 euros. “And from there up,” says Dirce, who adds: “The slope [técnica para sacar el pelo muerto] It goes from about 80 euros to a hundred and something. Moisturizing and ozone treatments are also in high demand.» At their center they see everything, like people who come to Madrid because there is a game at the Bernabéu and take the opportunity to leave their dog for a spa session. Also those who go with their dogs to have their hair dyed, like some Chinese clients who, following the current fashion in their country of origin, choose to adorn their pet with a pink streak: «They are vegetable dyes, special for dogs,» reassures Dirce, who assures that these The same clients come “rigorously every month and ask for everything; more than 100 euros are spent.” Aesthetic services are increasingly in demand, but they are still not suitable for all budgets.
‘Lion’ leaves the bathroom covered by Tete, who takes him to the room where he will be brushed and dried. Víctor Sanjuan “There are two types of clients: those who have their dog almost like their child and every 15 or 20 days ask for a wash to keep it looking great, and those who have a dog that probably has the dirtiest paws, but lives happily and comes more or less every month and a half,” summarizes Patricia Rodríguez, regent of the company for 10 years, on the phone. Gamperros dog hair salon, in the Coruña town of Miño. Who was once a “people’s hairdresser and actress” is now dedicated to a business that “has evolved a lot: from a service for posh dogs to something more accessible and necessary for everyday life.” Accustomed to dealing with large dogs that run around farms and arrive with spikes on their legs, Rodríguez believes that in the last decade these animals have been too humanized. “Now it is very common to take your dog to cut its nails, but if our dogs walked as much as they should, their nails wouldn’t have to be cut so much,” he explains, referring to those who usually carry their pets in their arms. In his opinion: “Dogs have to smell, run, get dirty.” He says that some people have asked him if their dogs did not appear on his hairdresser’s Instagram profile because they were «ugly.» For Diego López-Polín, founder of the Loranca Veterinary Clinic in 1998, contact with the dog groomer ended more or less in 2010, when he decided to close that service that a self-employed groomer provided in his center. “As a business it was not interesting for the clinic and it was just a source of problems,” he recalls. If there was a cut, a scratch or poorly cut hair, rather than getting angry with the hairdresser, they got angry with the clinic, he says. “Noise, hair, problems and zero margin,” he summarizes. And although he admits an evolution of dog grooming as “a service that people demand more and more,” he laments that “on too many occasions people come with veterinary diagnoses issued at the groomer.” Skeptical about issues such as chromotherapy, he recognizes the importance, for example, of therapeutic baths that often cannot be given at home.
‘Lion’ looks in the mirror while Dirce brushes his fur. Víctor SanjuanIf well-being is part of health, that of pets will directly influence that of humans. According to the global One Health movement, human, veterinary and environmental medicine must work hand in hand. One of its promoters from Spain, the Complutense professor and WHO advisor Bruno Gonzalez-Zorn, goes back to the 19th century to explain it, by telephone: “To eradicate rabies, Pasteur decided that people did not have to be treated, dogs had to be vaccinated.” Now that animals are another member of the family, he says: “It is more important than ever.”
