Ultimutt Dog Care

What's Happening at Ultimutt This Week Our 1st Birthday party was a success! We had close to 85 people in attendance. It was fun for the owners to meet each other and see the dogs interact. Check out our Facebook page to see many more birthday photos!!
Ultimutt's 1st Year in ReviewWe are so blessed to have the best clients, human and dog, in the world so thought that to celebrate Ultimutt's first anniversary we would take a look back on our first year.
Once almost everything was in place, we loaded a trailer behind Mary's SUV and headed to Kansas City to pick up everything we could dog related. Brook and Mary spend the next 2 days working their butts off and spending what little we had left to buy the fencing, bowls, retail items, etc. To see the 2 of us pulling a 20ft trailer loaded down was more than a sight! We stopped multiple times to duck tape the plastic wrap back around the pallets, re-tie the fencing, crates, etc to the trailer and only by the grace of God did we make it back safely. Our first customer actually started a few days before we opened. He helped the crews put up the sheet metal in the back and watched us do office work (like figure out how to get dogs in the door!). Brook & Mary always say "go big or go home" ... so fittingly our first dog was Farley, a large, beautiful Harlequin Great Dane. On August 17th, our doors opened for business and Mary's mom came from across the state to help and Brook's mom was here to help with everything. None of us slept the night before so we were here by 6:45 am and ready for the rush. Well, we waited ... and we waited ... and we waited. A few dear friends and family members came by to look around and buy a toy. We then thought we had our first client but it was someone delivering a bouquet of daisies from our friend Kara to wish us luck. We can't believe we are admitting this, but on Tuesday morning Mary went and picked up her cousin's dog and one of our good friend's dog to come back so it looked like we had a few more dogs in the back. Thankfully, we got our first real daycare dog, Darby. There were so few dogs that we could do lunch and nap time in the office. Darby claimed the lifted bed the 2nd day we were open and still believes that its her bed. The first week was a very long, very slow, and very scary week. Thankfully each week picked up a little more. We didn't meet many new dogs in August but fell in love with the ones we met: Darby, Buddy, Farley, Cutie Pie, Lilly Jack, Hershey and Dixie Bell. At the end of August, we knew we were doing what God meant for us to, but we needed more dogs.

One September morning, Brook yelled for Mary to come out back because someone had thrown dog food over the fence. We spent hours picking it up and are freaking out that someone would throw poisoned dog food over the fence. Two days later it happened again but lots more. We again spent hours picking it up and asked the police to do extra rounds at night. The next day Chuck, our wonderful neighbor, came over to see how things were going. We were telling him how someone had thrown dog food over the fence and by the 3rd day we were getting really concerned. Mary is on the phone with a client and Brook just starts laughing after she showed Chuck the 'food.' He informed us that we had been spending hours picking up rabbit pellets. And we claim to be Arkansas girls....
In October, we received a phone call from a very upset new mother. She had left her new puppy at home for the first time and didn't think she could handle the thought of doing it ever again. Sophie joined our lives the next morning. Mary has always had big dogs so she had no idea what to do with a 1.5 lb Shih Tzu puppy -- Thank goodness for Brook! Sophie used to sleep on our laptops. She has grown up so much! We looked over one day and she had a Saint Bernard cornered and she truly believes she weighs 200 lbs. We're thankful she only weighs 15lbs! She definitely rules the roost around here.Halloween and the doggie photos were wonderful. We had a blast even if the dogs didn't! Cutie Pie was freaked out by Lilly Jack's shark costume and kept trying to get the shark head off of Lilly.On Thanksgiving, we had 20 - 25 boarders. That was the first time that we had more than 30 dogs in a day. We were thrilled, overwhelmed, and beyond excited. Brook's parents and Mary's husband were called in to help. It was a wonderful weekend and great learning experience.
In February, we got to hire our first employee, Kristal Grounds. We were so thrilled that help was on the way! We're very blessed to have her! We also shot our commercial in February and we had 65 dogs that day. During Spring Break, we had 30 boarders each night and hit 73 dogs for our record! We were so excited and worn out!
In April, Brook had back surgery so Mary and Kristal needed help. Vicki Callaway was wonderful and came in to help. We were still growing so fast, Mary called Brook after surgery and informed her of hiring Christine Curran. She'd been a client for months and we knew her well so we knew she'd be a great fit!
May was our transition from our daily dogs to overnight boarders with families going on vacations. We had dogs sleeping over more and more. June and July continued with boarding. We had 80+ dogs several Friday's in a row. It was so awesome to see all the dogs here and playing.
We've lived and learned a lot in this past year with our first year of starting a business. Its been so great and we're very blessed to have such great dogs and owners!!