Island Profile: Amber Anglin realized her dream on the Island she calls home

Amber Anglin has, within the past decade, joined a small but select group: children of Island families, graduating from the Shelter Island School, sampling “the real world” and returning home with a clearer sense of who they are, what they want and how they might find it. They usually then go on, with the help and support of their families, to find homes here on the Island and earn enough of an income to live on.

For Ms. Anglin that career is at All Dogged Up, her pet grooming business on West Neck Road. “It’s a great feeling to be able to do something you really love,” she said.

And to do it where you really want to be.

“I grew up here,” Amber said. “I was born here and raised by my mother and father and my grandmother and grandfather.” She’s referring, of course, to Camille and Michael Anglin and Camille’s mother and father, Dorothy and Jack Calabro of Jack’s Marine on Bridge Street.

“Growing up, I’d always go down to the store after school and dust off things and stock the shelves and go fishing with my grandfather, who taught me how to make lures,” Amber recalled. “My grandmother’s sister, Eleanor and her husband, my Uncle John, lived with us too, on the same property. After going to the store until 5 o’clock, my mom would start making dinner and I would run down the driveway to them and play there. We have five acres there and we’d scavenge the yard.”

Much of Amber’s memories of growing up here also involve time spent off the Island.

“My parents always used to take us on vacations. We used to go out of the country. We went to Egypt when I was in fourth grade.”

Altogether they made eight trips, including Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands and Thailand. “My mom had studied geology and my dad had been in the service. They loved to travel, thought it was wonderful.  Instead of buying new cars or stereos, my parents saved their money to educate their children and make them appreciate other places.” Her sister, Kimberly, now Kimberly Fierstein, caught the travel bug as well and studied as an exchange student in both Argentina and Ecuador.

“During high school here on the Island, I was in the BOCES program off-Island as well, learning cosmetology,” Amber recalled.

After she graduated in 2002, she obtained her license, left the Island and went to work in New York City. For about 18 months she did hair and makeup for models in Cosmopolitan magazine photo shoots and Macy’s catalogs.

“It got old real fast. I didn’t like it anymore. The people were too chatty and I could never get to finish what I wanted to finish,” she said. “The hair had to be a certain way and they’d be on the phone and ‘I have to go to the bathroom’ and I only had 10 minutes with them. It was really unfair to me, but I still succeeded.”

“I ended up going my own way and started freelancing,” she continued. “I liked New York City, but I still loved it here. It was way too busy there, with a lot of commotion and a lot of the models were rude. I came home from there when I was 20.”

Upon her return she worked at her parents’ store for awhile.

“After I moved back home, I tried massage school but never could succeed there. It was really hard. All that physiology is for doctors and all the Latin versions of names, bones and muscles? Too hard for me. Then my mom said to me one day, ‘Why don’t you become a dog groomer? You always wanted to be a vet.’ And I said, ‘Oh, I didn’t even know people did that,’ that dogs got washed by other people, because I always washed my own. So I went ahead and called a couple of places and decided I wanted to learn the health issues and all.” She found a school, “one of the best,” the Paragon School of Dog Grooming. “It’s an amazing place, a four-month program” in Jenison, Michigan and she was there for the winter of her 21st birthday in 2004.

“I loved going to school there. It was a great experience, being with people that loved animals like I do,” she said. “They said I was so comfortable with my scissors and so comfortable with everything because of my cosmetology background, that they started me off really heavy and really pushed me hard. As a matter of fact, one of the first dogs they gave me was a poodle and it was the most intricate and detailed work, the hardest scissoring job you could do.”

When she returned from school, she worked for several groomers, including the Classy Canine in Southampton.

“I liked working at those places but they really had different views from what I wanted,” she said. “I had learned what I wanted to do and knew how I wanted to do it. I didn’t like other peoples’ ways, you know? I found this place here, started renting and my parents ended up buying it two or three years into it. They thought it was a great opportunity.”

Apparently her parents were right. This summer, All Dogged Up will reach its eighth year in business.

“Over the years, the place has changed a lot,” she said. “The furniture, when I first opened, I only had a little card table that you could pull out for a work area and now I have everything official, a great table, great equipment, everything.”

She grooms cats as well as dogs. “I try to plan a cat day, and have no dogs here. When I do have cats with the dogs, I usually just put the dogs outside, which they like. Then the cats have “free roam” behind the counter. I try to cater to the cats. Cats don’t like to be told what to do. I love it when they come.”

Amber says she no longer cages cats and dogs.

“I used to cage the dogs, when I started, thinking that was the way to go, but I don’t like that anymore,” she said, adding that caging dogs made them nervous. “I stopped the first year. Now I have individual rooms for boarding and the dogs can come home with me as well, sleep inside the house if they want, in my personal space. Over the past summer, I used another building on our property that I renovated completely, and made everything new and beautiful. It’s insulated, a completely new facility with six dog bedrooms there for both small and large dogs. And I fenced in two acres at the house for free space. In the summer, day care is there as well, because it can get pretty hectic here if there are 20 dogs to groom and 10 for day care or 30 for boarding. The summer business is amazing, and it’s good for the dogs to socialize and for them to get out of the house.”

But whatever the season, the place is a seven-day obligation. She tries to close one day and during the winter she has three days off. “This winter was the worst,” she said. “Up until now, I’ve been able to stay open seven days a week all winter. But the bad economy finally reached the Island. People are starting to conserve more, even I am. I don’t do all of the things I’d like to do.”

She’s 28 now, with a “significant other.”

“He’s definitely someone I’m looking forward to being with for awhile,” she said. “He’s amazing. He’s a tattoo artist and it’s good to have someone with a different perspective. He helps me think outside the box sometimes. We haven’t been together all that long, just since October, but it feels like forever. I think he’s going to stick around for a long time.”

She still finds time for bowling; her team is the Rockettes. And hates the fact that the season’s almost over. She goes to the gym regularly where she “has a really good routine.”

She’s also a member of the Chamber of Commerce and gets involved in event planning.

“But basically I’m a home person,” she said. “Video games with my tattoo person. That’s my sort of thing.”