It’s taken more than a year for Jenn Gavin, owner of
A Pleasant Dog, to find the right space to expand. Finding a building with enough outdoor green space and room indoors for a doggie daycare and training operation hasn’t been easy, but now that she’s got one, it was well worth the wait.
“As you can imagine, it’s pretty difficult to find that kind of space in the city,” says Gavin, who started A Pleasant Dog a little over two years ago as a one-woman operation. “Our ideal was to be on Wealthy Street, but we didn’t know if we could afford it.”
She found something that seems like a perfect fit just off Wealthy Street at 406 Barth Ave., a site that’s located one block away from the new Wealthy Street Animal Hospital. With plans to hire an additional trainer with the opening of the new space, A Pleasant Dog has expanded its staff to four trainers, two interns, and a dedicated office administrator.
“We were looking for a space that would allow us to do more training; we’ve outgrown our rental spaces and needed a somewhere new in order to open a very small-scale daycare, which was prompted by a need many of our clients expressed,” says Gavin, who will leave her current Heritage Hill location for the Barth Avenue site, but will continue to teach out of a number of local veterinary offices, as well as a space provided by Stepping Stones Montessori School.
The
1,200-square-foot space on Barth Avenue was formerly home to a barbershop that doubled as a recording studio. After the owners closed the business and the building was vacant for some time, Gavin saw an opportunity for her own business to grow into the big, open floor plan and adjacent outdoor lot on Wealthy Street.
“(The owners) did a beautiful job of restoring the building,” says Gavin, who sits on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission and says she feels lucky to have found such a nicely restored mid-century building, especially one that lends itself particularly well to its new proposed use.
Alongside landscaping work for aesthetics, Gavin plans to build ornamental fencing that looks like rod iron around the lots green space, eventually filling it with obstacle courses for agility training — just one of the many options now available for customers that range from supply classes to advanced obedience, with an additional regime of lessons designed specifically for owners with reactive dogs.
“My heart is in helping people with reactive dogs because it’s such a difficult situation to be in,” says Gavin, who has rescued and raised her fair share of reactive dogs. “It’s actually a cause for many dogs who are re-homed, because (owners) don’t know there’s a kinder and more humane way to deal with it.”
Though Gavin still has to go before the planning commission today for final approval on plans for the location, she says she’s already received support from the Eastown Community Association, the Baxter Neighborhood Association, Wealthy Street Business Alliance, and other businesses and residents along both Wealthy Street and Barth Avenue.
If all goes well, she plans to open A Pleasant Dog in its new home by June 1 and is currently raising funds through an Indiegogo campaign that offers those who donate a whole host of perks made possible through partnerships with other local businesses, such as leashes designed by Woosah Outfitters’ Erica Lang and free park memberships from Shaggy Pines Dog Park in Cascade, as well as other offers for class registration and even free dog training for life.
You can find out about
A Pleasant Dog’s Indiegogo campaign here, or visit
A Pleasant Dog online or via
Facebook to learn more.
Written by Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of Logan Zillmer Photo and Electric Elm
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