Dog Grooming and Daycare for Nesconset and Smithtown
Lillian Ruff Pet Spa
If Charles P. Toner Park is where your dog gets his hour off leash, a salon on Portion Road in Ronkonkoma may never have crossed your mind. Most people book wherever sits on the road they already drive. So here is the pitch with the geography left out of it: grooming, daycare and overnight boarding at one address, seven days a week, with the prices published before you pick up the phone.
835 Portion Rd, Ronkonkoma. Bath and brush $35 to $120 and a full groom with haircut $70 to $155, both set by your dog's weight. Daycare $35 for a full day, 7am to 7pm, seven days. Boarding from $60 a night with a full day of daycare included.
No catchment, no membership
We are not going to tell you how far Ronkonkoma is from your front door. You know your own roads better than we do, and a groomer guessing at somebody else's drive is worth nothing. What we can tell you is exactly what sits at 835 Portion Rd and exactly what it costs, and you can decide from there whether it is worth the trip.
There is no catchment and no membership. Suffolk County sets the boarding vaccine rules and those apply to us regardless of which hamlet you live in. Everything else is just picking a time.
Park rules that catch people out
Charles P. Toner Park, 148 Smithtown Blvd, Nesconset 11767, is Smithtown's fenced dog park. Blydenburgh County Park, also in Smithtown, has a designated dog area. Those two are the reliable off-leash and dog-friendly options people name most often.
Caleb Smith State Park Preserve in Smithtown bans pets outright — it is a passive preserve, so no dogs, no bikes, no picnics. At Sunken Meadow, leashed dogs are allowed only in the undeveloped eastern portion; they are barred from the beaches, boardwalks, playgrounds, golf course, pools and buildings. Both catch people out on a Saturday morning.
The after-park bath, and what it is not
An hour off leash on grass is the best thing you can give most dogs, and it is also how ticks get into your house. New York State's health department structures its own deer-tick surveillance into two fixed windows — nymphs May to September, adults October to December. Right now we are in the nymph half of the year.
Two Suffolk numbers worth carrying around. In 2025, county nymph density measured 61.04 ticks per 1,000 square meters, with 26.6% carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium behind Lyme. Adults collected that October through December tested positive at 52.8% — roughly double the nymph rate. For scale: Suffolk ranked only eighth in the state for nymph density, well behind Orange County, and the state reports the highest Lyme incidence rate over 2020 to 2024 in the Capital District rather than out here. What Suffolk does lead New York on is raw case count — 3,152 in 2024, more than any other county.
None of that is a reason to keep a dog off the grass. It is a reason to actually go over him afterward, which is the one thing a bath and a full comb-out does properly, because every inch of coat passes through somebody's hands.
Getting a dog wet, lathered and combed out is a good way to find ticks. It is not prevention and it is not treatment. Preventives are a conversation with your vet. If we turn something up on your dog — a tick, a lump, a hot ear, a sore between the toes — we will tell you and point you at your vet. We do not diagnose.
Grooming: how the weight bands actually work
Pricing is published by weight. A bath and brush runs $35 to $120. A full groom with a haircut runs $70 to $155. The bands are on the grooming page, so you can see your dog's price before you commit to anything.
Where you land in a range is mostly size, because size decides everything downstream — product, bath time, and above all drying and brushing time. A dense-coated seventy-pound dog is not twice the work of a thirty-pound one, it is more.
What changes a specific appointment is coat condition. A doodle or a shih tzu that has gone eight or ten weeks between visits in humid weather can come in with mats tight to the skin, and the honest answer is then often a shorter cut than you wanted. Shaving a matted dog is not laziness; combing out a pelt hurts, and the skin underneath is usually already irritated.
Book on a rhythm and you never have to have the shave-down conversation.
A full groom earns its money when
- The coat keeps growing — poodles, doodles, shih tzus, bichons, cockers
- The face, feet and sanitary areas need scissoring, not just washing
- You are eight-plus weeks out and the brush is starting to snag
A bath and brush is plenty when
- The coat sheds rather than grows — labs, shepherds, beagles, huskies
- You just want the park off him and the nails back under control
- You keep up with brushing at home and only need the deep clean
Things we do not do, said plainly so you do not waste a phone call: no cats, no creative coloring, no show grooming, and no hand-stripping. If you have a wire-coated terrier and you want the coat stripped rather than clipped, you want a specialist hand-stripper, and you should go find one.
Daycare and boarding under one roof, open seven days
This is the part that usually justifies the trip. The Ronkonkoma building does grooming, daycare, overnight boarding and retail, so a dog can come for the day and go home clean, or board for a week and be groomed the morning you collect him.
| Option | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Full day daycare, 4+ hours | $35 | Late pickup after 7pm is $5 per 15 minutes |
| Half day daycare, under 4 hours | $30 | — |
| 5-day pass | $162.50 | Saves $12.50 |
| 10-day pass | $300 | Saves $50 |
| 20-day pass | $550 | Saves $150 |
| Boarding, regular 4x4 private kennel | $60 / night | Full-day daycare included |
| Boarding, premium 4x6 private kennel | $75 / night | Full-day daycare included |
| Food, if you would rather not pack it | $5 / day per dog | Meals at 8am, 1pm and 6pm |
Passes have no expiration date and are non-refundable, and sales tax of 8.75% applies. Custom feeding schedules are available for puppies, seniors and medical diets. The one real limitation is medication that has to be given outside 7am to 10pm, which we cannot cover — tell us before you book, not at drop-off.
Boarding eligibility, in the salon's own words: a pet must be "non-aggressive, comfortable in a kennel, able to socialize, and free from bite history." That is not a formality. A dog who has never been kenneled and has never done a group day is a lot to ask on the first night of your vacation, which is what the meet and greet is for.
Under Suffolk County Code § 302-13, a boarding kennel cannot accept a dog unless the owner supplies a current health certificate from a licensed veterinarian showing vaccination against rabies, distemper, hepatitis, parainfluenza, parvovirus and coronavirus within the previous year — unless it is an approved three-year vaccine certified by the vet — and bordetella within the previous six months. That six-month clock is the one owners have almost always let lapse without noticing. Check your dates with your vet, and confirm the current requirements with us before you travel.
Book the meet and greet
A 30-minute first-visit evaluation. Bring the vaccine records with you.
Try a day before you try a night
One full day of daycare tells you more than any conversation will.
Then book the stay
Check in 2pm to 7pm, out 7am to 11am. Add a groom to the last morning if you want him home clean.
One thing worth knowing while you compare places, us included: New York State has no licensing or inspection regime for boarding kennels, daycare or grooming, and groomers here need no state license. A bill has been proposed but it is not law. So the questions are yours to ask — staffing, how dogs are grouped, what happens overnight. Ask them everywhere you look, here included.
Questions people actually ask
I'm in Nesconset — do you take dogs from Smithtown?
Yes. There is no catchment and no membership of any kind. Book online the same as anyone else.
What will my sixty-pound lab cost?
Grooming is priced by weight and the bands are published on the grooming page. Bath and brush runs $35 to $120, a full groom with haircut $70 to $155, with bigger dogs toward the top of each. Check the page rather than take a guess from us here.
My dog had bordetella last year. Is that enough to board?
No. Suffolk County runs bordetella on a six-month clock, separate from the one-year vaccines. And bordetella does not fully prevent kennel cough anyway — the AVMA describes it as canine infectious respiratory disease complex, with roughly eleven contributing pathogens, so a vaccinated dog can still pick something up in any group setting.
Can he board if he has never done daycare?
Start with the 30-minute meet and greet, then a day of daycare, then the overnight. It costs you one $35 day and it removes almost all of the risk of a bad first night.
Do you groom cats, or hand-strip terriers?
Neither. No cats, no hand-stripping, no creative coloring and no show grooming. For a wire coat you want a dedicated hand-stripper.
He came back from Toner Park with a tick. Should I book a bath?
Book it if the coat needs it. Do not book it as a tick treatment — that is a vet conversation, and one attached tick is not a grooming problem. We will always tell you what we find on the skin, but we do not diagnose or treat.
Pick a day and see the price first.
Weight bands and open times are on the booking page — no phone tag, no quote by guesswork.
See pricing & book ›835 Portion Rd, Ronkonkoma, NY 11779 · Open 7 days, 9–5
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