Petco

This review is for groomers Danielle & Britney, who got Tiger & I out of a jam in excellent fashion, stress-free, on one of the hottest mornings of the year. Our ride to our usual groomer in Dupont didn't show up, and boy did His Highness need a bath & brush! He'd gotten home from his camping out in the country kinda smelly and shedding like crazy. The latter made much more intense due to temps in the 90s and some extra stress.

I walked him up to Petco, a few minutes from home, where we go for food and toys and to see our friend Jill from time to time at the register. Anyway, I had read good things about Danielle and said to myself let's just go and see if she can take us w/out an appointment. Well, she did and she did graciously. In under two hours he was bathed and brushed and looked happy and fluffy when I picked him up.

Think you need to go to a boutique groomer to get a 5 star bath & brush-out?! Think again, all you need to do is take a five minute walk up the street to Petco to see Danielle & Britney. Thank you ladies, for excellent service. And making our lives so much easier :)

STAY AWAY. Go support your local mom-and-pop pet store even if prices are a few cents higher. Order online, even the Petco website is better than wasting your time by coming into this store.

It was my last and final trip to this store when I arrived and they were out of my brand of cat food. Spoke to a manager who said, "They sell in spurts. There are months when they hardly sell and there are months when they fly off the shelves. Unfortunately, this is one of those months." Well, duh! It's December; people are planning on stocking up for the holidays so they don't have to make trips to Petco. This is just poor inventory management.

NEVER AGAIN.

I recently took my miniature aussie Ripley in for a long overdue grooming. I was met early by groomer Sunshine, who immediately showed a great interest in my pup. We briefly discussed her grooming needs, and she was taken back snuggly in Sunshine's arms.

I received a courtesy call approximately 2.5 hours later letting me know Ripley was all done. When I picked her up, she presented very well! It was a great cut, and she seemed very happy. It was an excellent experience, and I got just what I had hoped for.

We will definitely be back, with great appreciate to Sunshine and Cherokee!

I visit this particular location because it's the only convenient pet store in the area. Firstly, I will say the store staff I encounter is generally fairly friendly. I cannot however speak to the grooming or training staff; I've not worked with either.

Now, the rest of my review:
- The store smells bad. It's generally an odor mix of pee, poo, wet dog and fish tank.
- Speaking of pee, it's often easy to find some in the aisles.
- Unfortunately, as if pee in the aisles wasn't bad enough, the place is also generally dirty. It needs an overall good spring (or winter, or summer, or whatever season!) cleaning.
- They need more cat food options, especially canned food. (It's supposed to be a PET store, not a DOG store.)
- There are very few pet food options made in the USA. With all that we've learned about pet food recalls, why not give customers equal options from within our borders?

In all honesty, I will probably visit again in the future anytime I forget to order pet food in advance online. However, I do not go inside by choice, only out of fear of what the pets would do to me if they didn't get dinner.
(Nonetheless, I don't dare exit the store without applying hand sanitizer. If I had booties for my shoes, I would wear those too.)

We decided to get the full lion's cut for my cat... I scheduled an appointment for 9am and had plans to meet friends at 11am. One would think this would be plenty of time, as I have heard it only takes 15-20 minutes to actually do the lion's cut.

It took over two hours. Apparently, the time they tell you when you schedule the appointment isn't the actual time when the appointment actually occurs. I drop my cat off at 9am and then go and sit in my car with a book to wait for them to finish. I see the groomer arrive at 9:30, casually smoke a cigarette in the parking lot and cha with friends. 10am rolls around and I wander back in to inquire about the hold-up. In then end, they finish at 10:45 and I am 30 minutes late to meet up with friends in Takoma Park. Ugh.

In the future, they should tell customers an actual expected time frame for such services, especially when they charge $100+ for this type of cut.

I wouldn't recommend this place on Connecticut Ave even if they offer you free merchant.
This place have such a big turn over that you can't keep up with.
Then they replaced by some weird staff whom claim to be the manager. You wonder how many managers can any store as small size as that store can have.
With all "so called managers" the store is very dirty and has a strong oder. The items are under stock and the fishes are mostly under observation for bing sick. Which in the end limits your choices of options. Even with limited options the fish that you purchased don't even last long. Due to some kind of virus.
Their policy is so inconsistent.
1st they encourage you to register so they can have a file of your purchased items. Then if you happened to return items within 30 days without recipe, they refuse to look up your file on line to locate your purchase date.
SO VERY UNORGANIZED.
Stay away from that petco on Connecticut ave and save your sanity.

This place needs updating and/or completely new staff. I want to like this Petco location, but shopping here is not a quick get-in, get-out process. Want to run in and get 1-2 items and check out quick? That is nearly impossible.

Whether you are trying to come in and pick up a heavy bit of kitty litter or dog food and catch a MetroBus, or paid for parking, or even metro, it is nearly impossible to get out of this store quickly. From what I can tell, there is only one counter to pay for items, yet this store is huge and one of very few options for people in this city.

Really, this Petco location needs to find a way for customers to purchase the items that are available in this store in an easy manner. I would love to be able to run into this store and quickly purchase an item, but that is not possible. There needs to be automatic checkout and more than one machine to check out at.

2.5 stars

While this Petco is very close to my apartment, and have stopped in for things in a pinch, its is a terrible pet store. The employees are not helpful, the items are not well organized, and often things are just out of stock. Not only that, but the place is kinda of grungy and dirty, but I guess that because its in a shady basement location.

I suppose the prices are "fair" for the location, but definitely are higher than the Petsmart in Bethesda. I'll save my dog the embarrassment, in front of his friends, and tell him we shop at Petsmart, not at this dump.

This is the most horrid Petco ever, always filthy and smelly and I avoid it whenever possible. It gets one star because it does carries Natural Balance cat food and Swheat Scoop litter, which I will only buy there in an emergency situation. (You must try Swheat Scoop if you have cats. Does Yelp have a way to review cat litters?)

This store has a mouse problem. For a while, food was kept stored in large plastic containers with lids, but that practice seems to have decreased lately, and now mouse poo is visible all around the store.

Without going on a total PETA rant, I just want to say that animals don't seem to be treated very well here, and I've seen many instances of obviously ill rats, hamsters, and birds kept in overcrowded cages. To me, this is enough reason to boycott the store.

For a city instance of a big chain pet store, this Petco really wasn't half bad. Prices seemed in line with their locations just a few miles away in the suburbs and they had a good selection of the items I looked at. Picked up a couple bags of kitty kibble and yet another toy for the world's most spoiled cat.

I'm all for supporting mom and pop shops but I also know that sticker shock that can come with independently owned pet stores when you're trying to feed your faithful "furkid". That larger chains like Petco make an effort to come into the city is a good thing when it provides for more competitive pricing. Staff seemed very pet and people friendly leaving me with the impression that this Petco serves its local community well.