DOGGED DETERMINATION
Pandemic pups throw a bone to I Believe in Dog Training.
COVID-19 threw a bone to Stephanie Bennett’s colorful pet care business, Believe in Dog Training, as panicked owners once eager to adopt pandemic pups face a daunting challenge to get their pets to behave.
There are yips and squeaks, woofs and barks at the facility just off Durham and Loop 610 in the Heights. It’s a far cry from when the stay-at-home order was issued in March and Bennett was forced to cut off her group classes and send her seven workers home.
She paid all of them during the nearly three weeks they were closed, using cash she saved to convert a pavilion into an extra air- conditioned facility for the summer, and applied for a Small Business Administration loan in case finances hit a rough patch.
Throughout, the emails and calls kept coming. As local shelters emptied their kennels to foster homes and forever families, Bennett’s voicemails and email inboxes overflowed with owners looking for puppy training and obedience classes.
After consulting with an attorney, she reopened the facility in April for one- on-one lessons, spaced out to allow her staff extra time to sanitize door handles and don personal protective equipment. They halted house calls to minimize contact with strangers. Within an hour of sending a reopening email out to her clients, Believe in Dog Training was fully booked.
“We got lucky, we got our business back,” Bennett said.
Bennett opened Believe in Dog Training in 2017. She previously worked at a dog training school in Los Angeles and cofounded Houston’s Peace Love Dogs.
While other dog trainers around Houston usually try to be a one-stop shop for grooming, training and boarding, Bennett said she prefers to focus on just one — getting the dogs to behave — and that’s been a major factor in her business’ success.
By June, the staff had restarted group lessons and their popular dropoff day classes to help pandemic puppies who aren’t going to dog parks or being exposed to new things as their owners work from home offices. They’ve added 10 new classes and now run seven days a week. At the end of October, Bennett had put up a banner on the business’ website warning prospective clients that some wait lists for classes were as long as two months due to “overwhelming popularity.”
“It’s a bit concerning because people will go back to work at some point, so we’re trying see a bit of those dogs now,” she said as Guapo, a 3-month-old gray American bully, tried to hop on a skateboard 6 feet away.
Bennett nearly doubled her staff from pre-pandemic levels and now employs 12 people to help her work with animals and run operations. Believe in Dog Training qualified for the smallbusiness loan but did not take it.
The dogs, it appears, like their time away from their owners as well. Even if it takes some time to get used to the separation. Several clients have purchased 40 days of classes in one go. A three-day starter package for puppy day school costs $500 and runs as high as $2,200 for the 20-day bundle, which includes day school, report cards and a puppy class.
Joanna Covington, Believe in Dog Training’s operations manager, said retail sales in its lobby, where shelves are stocked with puzzles and treats, slowed down due to the stay-at-home orders. They’re picking up again because owners are desperate to buy something to distract their doggos from begging for more belly rubs.
Demand shows no signs of stopping. They were fully booked by mid-October for the entire month of November, and Bennett and Covington expect the same level of demand in December even with the holidays.
When her clientele returns to a normal pace, Bennett thinks she’ll be able to build the additional enclosure to the back and add turf to their outdoor spots.
“I’ve been training for 15 years,” Bennett said. “I never thought I could fill a 7:45 p.m. class on Friday this easily.”