A couple of years ago before I opened my own Camp Bow Wow location in McHenry, I was at a zoning meeting providing support for a fellow franchisee. The franchisee was presenting to the city to try to convince them to grant a conditional use permit for a proposed Camp Bow Wow location on the south side of Chicago.
The location that they had chosen was in an industrial park but had a residential track of townhouses nearby. At least 50 residents showed up for this zoning hearing to protest the conditional use permit for Camp Bow Wow. Each resident took their turn to stand up and speak out against the idea of putting a doggy daycare and overnight boarding facility in this particular location.
I listened intently to what all the objections were so I would know what to expect at my own zoning hearing coming up for my Camp Bow Wow location in McHenry. I’ll never forget what one woman said about the capacity of the Camp. She said, “Fifty dogs? That’s a lotta poop!”
The whole meeting erupted in laughter and it was quite hilarious. Now, when talking about my own Camp, that’s one of my favorite lines. Whenever someone asks me how many dogs we can hold and I answer, “About 100 dogs at any given time.” The response is always, “Wow, 100 dogs! That’s a lot of dogs!” To that, my response is, “Yes, that’s a lotta poop!”
This year for Spring Break we were so busy with 80 dogs a day. That was our busiest time ever since we opened just over a year ago. It was SO much fun to have that many dogs here. One of the things that we can use to gauge how busy we are is how often we change the poop cans. When we first opened we only changed the poop cans in the evening after we tucked the dogs in for the evening.
As we started to have more and more dogs every day, we started to realize that we needed to also change the poop can at noon so the bag did not get too heavy carrying it out to the dumpster. Over spring break we found we had to change the poop can right away in the morning after we first let the dogs out. They filled that thing right up in just 30 minutes! Now we were changing it THREE times a day to keep up with all the poop.
All I can say to that is “That’s a lotta poop!”
Have a Dog Gone Great Day!
Kari
