MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR · LINDENHURST

Before Jenn Calvi and Joe Caivano opened a business together, they gutted a house together.

“We did the whole house ourselves,” Calvi said. “On the weekends, we were painting ceilings, laying down floors. We knew we had the ability to work together.”

The Lindenhurst couple now own Woof Gang Bakery & Grooming West Islip, a bright-pink shop at 425 Union Blvd. They opened it on April 17, nearly two years after they started looking.

Their story starts with the dogs, in January 2021. Calvi had two. Caivano, a Lindenhurst native and Lindenhurst High School graduate, had one. The dogs got along, so that was that.

“It was like, ‘I guess we live together now,’” Calvi said. “We were like a little blended family.”

Neither quit a day job. She works remotely for Blood Cancer United; he works for Con Edison in Flushing. The shop is the long game — something that could become a retirement plan.

They looked at doggy day cares first. Calvi ruled that out on the grounds that she knows herself.

“I’d probably just want to keep all the dogs,” she said.

Despite the bakery case full of frosted skulls and pumpkins, grooming is the business: full and mini grooms, baths, nails, and spa upgrades with names like the blueberry pie facial and the “Happy Barkday” package.

They also open early or stay late, at no extra charge, for private shopping sessions with reactive dogs — so a dog that cannot handle a crowded shop still gets to pick out its own toy.

Eight people work there. Calvi credits them for the start the couple has had, and says one groomer sings to the dogs.

Theirs is still the only Woof Gang in Suffolk County.

“We’re still kind of the little engine that could,” Calvi said.

Stock photo: A dog at a grooming salon. Photo by Goochie Poochie Grooming / Pexels; not taken at the location in this story.

Sources: Greater Long Island · Woof Gang Bakery