Running Wild in Kentucky
Looking for a niche market? Pet services, including health care, generate approximately $11 billion a year

IF it seems like everybody in Kentucky and their brother has some kind of pet, it’s because it’s true. Today Americans take care of – or in some cases fail to take care of – over 110 million dogs and cats, and several million "other" animal companions – in over 61 million households. The natural outgrowth of all that pet growth is a huge surge in the pet products and services sector of the economy.

The American Pet Products Manufacturers Association’s 1999 National Pet Owners Survey indicated a continuous growth in the number of U.S. pet-owning households since 1989 of 18 percent, with dogs and cats primarily accounting for the increase. Consequently, according to U.S. News & World Report, pet services, including health care, now generate approximately $11 billion a year.

So not only are more companies and individuals springing up to do something for your pet, but the proliferation of animal lovers in every arena may be raising a new awareness of how we live and work with other species, and with our own.

Healthy companions

Drs. Todd Marcum and Michael Gentry are the principal owners and operators, with business manager Rosie Schooler, of Sheabel Pet Center in Lexington, comprised of a medical center, boarding kennel and training facility. Including groomers, technicians, pre-vet students and stalwarts like trainer Tony Littrall and kennel manager Terry Weaver, the Sheabel facility now employs 30 people. According to Dr. Gentry, the enterprise is growing at a rate of 15 to 20 percent a year.

At Sheabel, there are really two businesses – the medical center and the pet care center, which includes boarding, grooming, training and supplies. Dr. Gentry estimates that 60 percent of the establishment’s business comes from the medical center, including such extras as a pet taxi service.

The facility, like the pet cemetery that also bears the Sheabel name (see sidebar) was started by Bill Shea in 1952, as a small boarding kennel and grooming operation. The vet clinic was built in the 1980s, and Marcum and Gentry joined the operation in 1989. Sheabel has undergone extensive renovations over the past couple of years, but the volume of business convinced the owners to never close down, even for one day.

Among the trends both doctors see in the field are a need for behavioral counseling, grief and bereavement counseling and geriatric care for animals.

"The quality of care today is unreal compared to 15 years ago," says Gentry. "We have laser surgery, endoscopy, MRIs and even radiation cancer therapy available to us."

And a startling array of pharmaceutical options as well. In Newsweek last year, Novartis Animal Health CEO Dale Miller estimated the U.S. market at $3 billion, and growing, like Sheabel, at a rate close to 20 percent annually.

"The biggest difference between 10 years ago and today is they’re doing like the human pharmaceuticals and marketing directly to the public," says Gentry, "rather than us recommending it. By the time we get the product, somebody is already asking for it."

"That’s a positive and negative," notes Marcum. "You have to have the right medication, and sometimes you have to refute an owner’s wish because it may not be correct for the animal at that time."

As it offers more services like a new retail store, Sheabel hopes to lure the growing population of pet owners toward one-stop shopping. But they have a hedge as well – Marcum and Gentry also operate a franchise called VetsMart out of the new PetSmart store at Hamburg Pavilion. Like that hugely successful retailer, Sheabel aims to please everyone.

IncrediPet grew from feed needs

The same could be said for pet products, which these days go way beyond food, bowls and scoopers.
As megastores like PetSmart attest, there’s no shortage of stuff to please every whim of Fluffy or Scamper. From 1993 to 1997, retail sales of pet-related products soared from $16 to $23 billion, and continue to both extend and broaden their reach.

A brief perusal of a pet supplies catalog reveals such products as orthopedic beds, cookies that both you and your pet can consume, the Doggie Dooley® septic system for animal waste, eye-catching cat furniture and an array of electronic training devices for off-leash control. Your pet’s cosmetic counter can be as full as its master’s too, with compounds to treat ears and eyes, shampoos and additives for dry skin and that perfect after-bath cologne. In fact, some of those colognes are made in Lawrenceburg, at Glo-Marr-Kenic, Inc. And some of them are sold at Lexington-based pet store chain IncrediPet. The Hall family has run Farmer’s Feed Mill for decades, providing feed for most every domestic animal but dogs and cats. Then in 1987, Bob Hall and his son Lee had an idea to open a store for pets only, then called Pet Pantry. They talked Lee’s sister Julia out of the restaurant and catering business to come help run it. Today she runs the successful four-store IncrediPet operation that provides food of every variety as well as pet toys, furniture, fish and aquariums and a growing inventory of gift items.

"It was such a novel concept to have a store for pets that didn’t actually sell them," she says. "None of us had any retail experience – perhaps that was naiveté on my part. But we just made friends with people, and they trusted me and had confidence in what I was telling them, and they saw results with their food and toys and treats."

In 1996, when it reached four stores, the company adopted a uniform look to its stores, added products like live fish, and services like its always busy dog washes.

"It’s booked every weekend," says Hall. "It’s turned out to be a really popular item."

The store carries supplies for your parrot, angel fish or African pygmy hedgehog as well, and staff are always on the lookout for the next trend, which might just be the sugar glider, a "pocket pet" marsupial that’s hot on the coasts. They also look out for unique products, especially if they can be obtained from small, high-quality vendors.
Among those items are smoked bones from Pernell Sausage in Simpsonville, as well as a dog treat called Want a Snack being launched by a Winchester resident.

"It’s all about relationships," Hall stresses. "That’s the key to success in anything. It’s important that we never be a big box, warehouse type store. We want to be a neighborhood store, and don’t desire to be anything other than that."

Empowering the dog

"How can I deny a dog the need for attention?"

Thus does dog trainer Janece Rollet proclaim her mission – to let dogs be dogs, and to give her Shepherds Crossing kennel guests and training pupils the things they’re most lacking: social contact, exercise and rewards galore.

The fringe benefit for the owners of these lucky campers (the kennel currently boards a maximum of only 15 dogs), is that their pets come home tired and happy. If the weather’s decent, then more often than not the dogs are loose in paddocks, roaming and sniffing and playing like the horses in the fields nearby. In the kennel, it’s country music all day long, and classical at night.

"One of the reasons I built this kennel was I was tired of seeing my dogs come home stressed and unhappy for no reason," says Rollet, who’s been training dogs since she was eight years old. "I thought, ‘There’s gotta be a better way,’ and I found it – it’s called human contact, constantly, all through the day."

With her partner, research scientist Wendy Katz, Rollet will soon be opening a four-acre "doggie daycare" training facility. It will feature socialization and handling training, as well as specialties like carting, agility and tracking. But the primary business will be simple day care, where the dogs will have a place to "play and run around and get tired."

Rollet trains 300 to 350 dogs a year, and limits home training to about four dogs a month. Her classes run from 40-50 dogs a session, which lasts eight weeks.

There are some problems with Rollet’s method of operant conditioning, but the benefits far outweigh the hazards.

"One of our biggest problems is anthropomorphizing, making these animals into little miniature humans. One of the wonderful things about animals is that they have their own uniqueness. We have human things that nothing else has, but dogs have "dog," and horses have "horse." If we start to think a little bit more like the animals we’re training, we’ll have happier dogs, and fewer in shelters and being euthanized."

"Pets give you unconditional caring, they listen," Rollet says. "They touch a part of us that we’re missing. We don’t have a closeness in this country that used to exist. Pets give us the ability to touch gently, to cry, because they’re not going to tell anybody. They make us feel safe. No matter who we are we need something or someone that accepts us, and animals do that."

Adam Bruns is a staff writer for The Lane Report

ALSO: Pet Cemetery Filled With Memories, Stories, Rupp’s Poodle

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