MEET THE GURUS

A former accountant living in Texas and a former Marine living in Virginia had mirrored lives and passions. Both were entrepreneurs, both were proud owners of insanely popular pet care facilities and both were bucking the industry trend at the time by putting dogs from different families together to play. Yes, dog daycare as we know it today was completely frowned upon 20 years ago, yet that didn’t stop these two pioneers from figuring out how to do it safely and profitably.

In Virginia, Robin was turning her hobby and love of dogs into a full-time business by expanding her dog training business to include dog daycare. Like most entrepreneurs she worked long hours running all aspects of her company initially, but she soon realized that she needed to work smarter, not harder. So after a year, she faced the reality of an ever growing customer base and finally hired her first employee. It didn’t go exactly as planned.

A few days after hiring Jessi, she felt confident enough in her skills that she decided to treat herself to a lunch break. It had been over a year since Robin had had a lunch hour and she was ecstatic to carve out a little time away from the office. She left Jessi in charge of about seven dogs knowing that group size had always been quite manageable for herself. She ducked out for a sandwich at Subway and returned twenty minutes later to find pandemonium. The floor was covered in blood, Jessi was covered in tears and an unfortunate small dog was shivering in her arms. Turned out one of the larger dogs was pestering the small dog and when Jessie picked up the smaller dog to put him safely inside a crate, the larger dog bit him on the tail. Luckily, the damage looked much worse then it actually was and the dog was fine, but the shock of the ordeal got Robin to thinking. Her natural ability to keep dogs safe wasn’t natural for everyone and she needed to figure out how to pass along her knowledge to others.

Meanwhile in Texas, Susan was working to figure out how to train her own staff. Her facility had a really good safety record with very few dog injuries. Her client base was growing and dogs liked coming to daycare, but she still faced an ever-revolving door of staff turnover. She figured there must be a better way to train the staff and keep them with the company for longer.

It was then that fate intervened. Robin and Susan met at a dog daycare and boarding conference. Robin was speaking and shared the importance of reading body language of dogs at play to keep dogs physically safe. That made a lot of sense to Susan, but when Robin asked the audience whether or not the dogs in their care were as well off emotionally when they left as when the arrived in the morning, that question really made Susan stop and think.

After leaving the seminar, Susan knew her staff had to learn canine body language to keep dogs safe, physically and emotionally, so she started searching for tools to teach her staff. Books on the subject were limited, very scientific and not something easy to understand. The videos she found were boring with slow, monotone descriptions of dog calming signals. Determined, she did the only thing that came to mind which was to create her own cut and paste book on body language to train her staff.

Then Susan had a brainstorm. What if two people who loved the industry and shared a common desire to keep the dogs safe worked together to create the tools needed? Both knew that people could be motivated to work in careers with dogs. Both knew that canine body language was observable and could be taught to others. Both knew their own dog daycare facilities would benefit from better tools and resources which were few and far between back when Robin and Susan started!