We’ve now entered the busiest time of year for us, driven by all the summer travel. It requires us to balance increased lodging with strong daycare demand. Two years ago, we forecasted that demand would soon outpace capacity, and began plans for an expansion that would have doubled our size. The design process was complicated due to the wetlands and floodplain on and around our property. We worked with the Town of Mooresville’s Planning department to address those constraints and, after submitting our updated design, we learned that the town had just passed new restrictive requirements for all animal care facilities.
At the Mooresville Planning Department’s recommendation, we submitted an application to modify the new requirements for all facilities, current and future, but the Mooresville Town Council members unanimously voted against them. It is now extremely difficult for any other pet services business with outdoor play yards to expand or open, and Mooresville now has one of the most restrictive policies towards indoor kennels with outdoor play yards in the state. No one on town staff was able to provide us with any instances of complaints or issues in town that they were trying to resolve when implementing the changes and the new requirements were never vetted in a public forum.
To make the situation even more challenging for local pet owners, one of the boarding/daycare businesses in Mooresville recently closed, leaving a number of their clients scrambling to find a solution for their pets. Mooresville’s human and pet populations continue to grow dramatically, but pet-related services are not able to grow accordingly.
We are working on plans for a much smaller expansion, but are still in the design phase and are far from certain that the Town will permit it. So, how to best manage our finite number of enclosures? We don’t want to turn people away and we have definite concerns for the families and pets we aren’t able to help. As a result, we’ve implemented some policy changes to help us balance the competing demands:
- In order to protect space for existing clients, we’ve reduced the number of available new client daycare spots further. New clients are important to the health of our business and we love meeting new faces. But we don’t want to shut out our existing clients.
- We are now screening clients who previously no-showed for appointments so they don’t repeat the practice of wasting a space that someone else could leverage.
- Beginning 7/10, we will stop offering a discount for lodging departure day baths. When clients pick up in the morning, it frees the suites for incoming dogs. Clients are still welcome to keep their dogs with us the full day, but we are removing the discount in order to cover the costs of care.
- We’ve implemented a charge for new client behavior assessments. A good bit of effort goes into assessing new dogs and we want to focus our efforts on welcoming new clients who are serious about bringing their pets to us regularly.
Overwhelmingly, you’ve all been patient, kind and understanding about the capacity constraints. You are wonderful to our staff. Which just makes us want to help you all the more. Our best advice is to submit your reservations as soon as you can, use our client portal to review your upcoming stays so you don’t risk no showing for an appointment, and make sure we have your pet’s up-to-date vaccinations. For more tips: Reservation Tips.