For 20 years, professional dog groomer Joan Payton has volunteered her time to care for dogs — hundreds of shelter dogs — to make them cuter and cuddlier, healthier and happier, and make adoption much more likely.

Her magic worked again Friday at the Kern County Animal Shelter when a 1-year-old mixed breed named Lionel was adopted to a forever home just hours after a doggie spa treatment transformed him from dirty stray to handsome pet, courtesy of Payton.

“Joan has been here longer than 99% of our employees, including me,” said Nick Cullen, director of Kern County Animal Services. “I have an incredible amount of respect for her.”

That’s because Payton, 66, not only grooms dogs and bathes them and trims their nails and talks to them as if they understand her every word, she also saves their lives.

And that’s the whole point.

It was 9 a.m. Friday when Senior Animal Care Worker Taylor Meade brought Payton a 2-year-old shih tzu, a pitiful 17 pounds of filthy, snarled, matted, frightened former pet.

“This little guy seems really nice and well behaved,” Payton said after she used electric clippers to begin taking off the dog’s soiled coat.

It was a slow, painstaking process.

“He’s doing really well,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s terrified. Sometimes they’ll be so scared that they just don’t breathe.”

As she worked, she discovered foxtails that had been embedded in his skin and between his toes. It’s no wonder he tried to pull away when Payton’s clippers and scissors came anywhere near his paws or his face.

One of his eyes looked like it needed some attention as did a red spot on his face. So Payton made some notes she will share with the shelter’s veterinary services, asking them to check out those trouble spots.

The 2-year-old lap dog had not yet been given a shelter name. But the shy, gentle orphan certainly needed a home and a family. His ID adoption number at the shelter was A1255648.

Payton has been grooming dogs since the early 1980s, but she no longer works in a shop for eight or nine hours a day, grooming one pet after another.

But she still styles a few show dogs and family pets for friends, especially older dogs, which she believes should not be made to wait three or four hours to be groomed.

She doesn’t come to the shelter every month for the money. Volunteers are not paid. And she doesn’t do it for the recognition. Getting her to say yes to this story really took some doing.

What she loves, besides the animals themselves, is the idea that a family or an individual can arrive at the shelter, see one of her freshly groomed canines, and immediately fall in love.

It’s not easy being that good at your work. The cramped room she toils in at the Fruitvale Avenue shelter can get hot and humid. The animals are stressed and sometimes behave accordingly.

“I’ve been bitten more times than I care to realize,” she said of her 45 years as a dog groomer.

But surprisingly, getting nipped by a shelter dog has been quite rare.

“I think the only dog that’s gone after me here was years ago, and he didn’t break the skin,” she remembered.

One problem she and her fellow shelter volunteers and staff have seen over the years is that too many people take in dogs without ever thinking about whether they are willing or able to give their pet the care and attention it needs.

“It’s shocking and amazing sometimes that people don’t seem to know,” she said. “You would think in this day and age that people would be like, ‘Oh, I have a pet, I need to take care of it.’”

A few weeks ago, Payton received an urgent call from the shelter asking her to come in to help with a dog that had just come through intake.

The stray was a mess, and he was suffering as a result.

“It took me four hours to take care of that dog,” she said. “I think he picked up every burr in the city.”

By the time Meade, the animal care worker, brought in Lionel, dog No. 2, Payton was feeling the nearly two hours of work she’d already completed.

“He’s not matted, so I can put him in the tub and find out what color he is,” she said of Lionel. “As you can see, this isn’t a clean dog.”

As she wet him down, an odor started rising that hadn’t been immediately apparent before.

“Eww, you’ve been skunked,” Payton said to Lionel. “You’re a dirty, dirty dog.”

But after a thorough shampoo, a blow dry, some moderate clipping and brushing, Lionel’s name had been properly lengthened to Sir Lionel the Lionhearted.

A bright scarf around his neck completed his new carefree image.

It wouldn’t be long before he was on his way to his new home filled with love from his new family. At least one can hope.

“I see tons of people here with skills,” Meade said of the wonderful volunteers and staff he works with.

“But I don’t see that many people with this much dedication,” he said of Payton’s 20 years.

“People wash out,” he said. “It’s a hard place to work. Not a lot of people can handle it.”

But Payton keeps coming, he said, because she knows she’s needed.

But even Payton realizes she can’t do it forever, and she hopes that someone with dog grooming experience shows up one day to team up with her and spread the benefits to a few more deserving dogs.

It’s a 20-year legacy that’s worth continuing.