Good Neighbor Podcast: Colorado Springs
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Colorado Springs. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Tony Hills helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Is your business serving the residents of Colorado Springs? Then, we need to talk! Visit gnpColoradoSprings.com to schedule your free interview.
Good Neighbor Podcast: Colorado Springs
EP #26: Unraveling the Journey of a Doggy Daycare Trailblazer: Joelle Audette of Canine Campus Dog Care & Boarding
What makes Joelle Audette with Canine Campus Dog Daycare & Boarding a good neighbor?
Joelle Audette, the visionary behind Canine Campus Dog Care & Boarding, joins us to unravel her inspiring journey from a TV station to the forefront of the doggy daycare industry in the Pikes Peak region. Since 1999, Joelle has been a trailblazer, transforming the perception of doggy daycare from an unknown concept into a cherished service that pet owners trust wholeheartedly. Her dedication to ensuring the utmost care and safety for every dog, coupled with her commitment to maintaining a spotless facility, shines through as she shares the philosophy behind her successful business. Joelle's story is not just about the growth of Canine Campus but also about building enduring relationships with clients who have entrusted her with their furry family members across generations.
What makes Canine Campus stand out? Joelle's open-door policy invites pet owners to tour the facility any time, fostering transparency and trust. This welcoming environment, supported by knowledgeable supervisors ready to address any inquiries, speaks volumes about their exceptional customer service. Joelle also sheds light on common misconceptions, such as the false belief that kennel cough originates from daycare centers, by drawing parallels to how children catch colds at school. By the end of our conversation, we're not only grateful for Joelle's dedication but confident that Canine Campus will continue to flourish as a leader in pet care. Join us for a heartfelt exploration of a business rooted in care, trust, and community.
To learn more about Canine Campus Dog Daycare & Boarding go to:
Canine Campus Dog Daycare & Boarding
719-448-9600
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Tony Hills.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you looking for a great doggy daycare and overnight boarding company? One might be closer than you think. Today I have the pleasure of introducing our good neighbor Joelle Audette of K9 Campus Dog Care and Boarding. Joelle, how's it going?
Speaker 3:Good, how are you?
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. We're excited to learn about your business, so tell us about your company.
Speaker 3:We opened in 1999, so we like to call ourselves the pioneers of the doggy daycare industry in the Pikes Peak region and Colorado. I actually worked at a TV station back in 99 and saw a story come down on the wire of a doggy daycare in California and there were none in the Pikes Peak region and so we decided to go ahead and there were about five in Denver at that point and so we decided to go ahead and open up a doggy daycare and overnight boarding facility and we actually brought our kitchen table down as the front counter. We were very careful because we weren't sure if the concept was going to take off or not, since we were the very first ones offering the service in this area and of course it obviously is a huge thing nowadays. When we first opened, we spent probably the first three to five well, probably three to five years teaching people what doggy daycare was. Nobody knew, so we were the educators of the industry here in this area and we have provided safe, fun pack play for 25 and a half years now and I pride myself and my staff on the way that we handle the packs.
Speaker 3:The health and safety of the dogs are absolutely number one. We treat every dog in the building like they are our own pets and we clean the facility as if they were our own pets and so on. So very proud of our product or service, I should say that we offer and we actually have customers that are on their third generation of dogs with us. So, unfortunately, as you probably know, dogs don't last as long as we would like them to and things come along and so we have customers that started out with us and when we opened and they had their first pet with us and then that pet grew old and passed and then now they had a second pet in the 2000s. Now they're on their third pets with us and we've got numerous families that have done that, generation after generation, with their animals and their family, and so I really pride myself on that that we're offering such a dedicated service that people feel like they can continue to come back to us over and over again. Okay, okay, awesome.
Speaker 2:How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:Well, as I mentioned, I was working at one of the TV stations here in town, in the Springs, and I was going out on maternity leave and looking for an alternative to the news business. Looking for an alternative to the news business, and it just by chance. You know, I saw a story come down on the wire, called it the wire. It was a story that came out of California, and so I talked to my partner about it and we decided that we were going to go ahead and try it, and it was. You know, we were very careful at the beginning.
Speaker 3:Like I said, we had to educate the people in town pet owners as to what daycare was for dogs. So the first couple of years we had lots of people calling for child daycare. Our name would come up and or they would find us in the phone book back in the day the actual printed phone book and they would call us in the phone book back in the day the actual printed phone book and they would call us thinking that we were child daycare. So, even with the dogs in the background, we had to explain no, we're actually daycare for dogs. So so that's pretty much how it started and it just went on from there okay, okay, what are myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 2:Okay, what are myths?
Speaker 3:or misconceptions in your industry. I think that, boy, I mean, I've got such a range, because back in the day when we first opened, you know it was educating people what is doggy daycare? Well, you drop them off on your way to work and you pick them up on your way home. That's the daycare portion. Then, of course, we provide overnight boarding as well A lot of people. So we were real big about our. We have an open facility. So if customers wanted to, or we will walk them through the entire building. I think that there are a lot of places and still to this day, as crowded as this market has become, I think to this day there are a lot of places, a lot of doggy daycares, that are not offering an open door policy. And we do because we don't want to. You know we want the customer to be able to see exactly where their dog's going to be sleeping, exactly where their dog's going to be accessing, you know, the whole the building. I think that's really important that we have an open door policy. I heard, especially back in the day a long time ago, that there were a lot of places that would not allow the customers to see where the dogs would be staying overnight or see where the dogs are groomed and that sort of thing, and I just think the open door policy is huge.
Speaker 3:The other misconception that we've dealt with along the years that is really frustrating from my part, my perspective, is kennel cough. Let's talk about kennel cough First of all. The word kennel, associated with cough, is a misconception itself, because the cough doesn't come from the walls of the kennel. Okay, somebody has to bring in that cough and so you know it's an upper respiratory just like kids get when they go to school. But a lot of times over the years we have been blamed as a facility for having kennel cough in our building and technically that's not how it works. Like I said, it doesn't seep out of the walls, it doesn't come from the kennel, it comes from other dogs that have been to our facility. Somebody walks in with it.
Speaker 3:We are I've been told by vets across town as well as state inspectors that we have a very low record of having illness come out of our facility compared to the other facilities. We are very, very careful with making sure that all the dogs are current on vaccinations. Here's another misconception. We require every dog to be current on Bordetella, which is the kennel cough vaccination. Every dog in my building has the kennel cough vaccination and it's current. However, we still periodically get quote unquote kennel cough because again, it's just like us getting the flu. We have the flu shot. You can still get the flu because another strain comes through. So that has been something that we've really had to battle over the years is the misconception that people are thinking that they're getting the kennel cough from my facility when in fact they're getting it from another dog in the community.
Speaker 1:So so anyway, I could go on for hours on that subject.
Speaker 3:My, my, um. The most important thing to me is that if a dog does become ill in my facility, we take care of it right away. We contact the owners, we get them to the vet. If needed, we isolate them and we get them out of the pack so that we can try and eradicate that upper respiratory from the rest of the pack.
Speaker 2:Okay, who are your target customers and how do you attract them?
Speaker 3:You know, my customers range from college students to retired couples, same-sex couples, families with 10 children, families with no children. Really, you know, it's every anybody that has a dog technically a friendly dog, that that would thrive in a pack situation. That's, that's our target audience and really we, because we've been here for so long, we don't need to search for customers per se, because we have multiple families that have been coming in with multiple dogs over the years. We have vets referred to us, we have a lot of referrals from our current and former customers, and so we don't really need to seek out a lot of advertising. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, all right. Outside of work, what do you do for fun? All right, all right.
Speaker 3:Outside of work. What do you do for fun? Well, I'm a proud mom of three kids. All three of them are in their 20s now and the oldest was actually five months old when we opened the business. So we've come a long way. I actually went through two pregnancies in the pack of dogs, believe it or not, with my middle and my youngest and my middle. Yeah, I was in the pack of dogs, believe it or not, with my middle and my youngest and my middle yeah, I was, I was in the pack pregnant. So my middle is a active Navy and my daughter and my oldest I actually both go to Pikes Peak Community College right now finishing up degrees. And so, just right now, finishing up degrees, and so just and you know, now that my kids are in my 20s and I'm not working as much as I used to, I am kind of just enjoying my friends and family and and enjoying not having to be on a concrete floor for hours and hours and hours at a time, which I did for many, many years. So, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:Let's risk years. Can you describe your hardship? Hardship or life challenge you overcame? How did you stronger? What comes to mind?
Speaker 3:Well, let me tell you a little story about the windstorm that came through Colorado Springs. December of gosh, was it? Two years ago? 22, 22, 21. I think it was 22. Took the roof right off my building with all my dogs in there. Yeah, that was life-changing. So we're standing out there with a hundred mile an hour winds, the roof is coming off. We're getting all the dogs safe and secure. My staff was amazing. They grabbed all, grabbed their cell phones and we started calling customers right away to come and get their dogs. We had to run their dogs out with all of this debris because we were stopping the cars out in the parking lot because the debris was coming off the roof.
Speaker 3:It was I'm shaking thinking about it. It was, I'm shaking thinking about it. It was absolutely horrifying. And then my, a couple of my supervisors actually stayed overnight, several nights, until we got a temporary roof put back on, and it was right before the holidays, which is one of the busiest times of our season or of our year. So we have, you know, a lot of dogs.
Speaker 3:The customers were amazingly supportive. It was amazing. We had no electricity for like two or three days, no heat. Thank God, it was warmish. You know, Colorado warmish in December then and that was just absolutely changed my perspective on everything. I thought, you know it's one of. It was one of those moments where you realize how valuable life is and your stuff, you know, Not that stuff's important, but the safety of the animals was absolutely. I just was absolutely horrified by that experience.
Speaker 3:But K-9 Campus has a community. My staff, my friends, my support system, everybody came together and we got through it. My roofing company they were wonderful. They got down there as fast as they could and got a temporary roof put on and, like I said, just the supervisors that stayed overnight with the dogs in that building and they didn't have to, but they did because we wanted to make sure that the dogs were safe and comfortable and warm. They literally slept in the same area as the dogs did. In fact, I understand that they let the dogs out of the dorms, they let the dogs out of their dorm rooms and they actually all slept together in one big pile. So that was interesting, Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, joelle, please tell us just one thing they should remember about canine campus dog daycare and boarding. One thing, what I'm sorry. All right, joelle, please tell us just one thing they should remember about K-9 Campus, dog Day Care and Boarding.
Speaker 3:One thing what I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Please tell us one thing they should remember about K-9 Campus Dog Day Care and Boarding.
Speaker 3:Oh, we've got the best homestyle dog care you can find anywhere. I have the best staff. We love your dogs like they are our own and that shows through our clean facility, our safe pack play, the way that these dogs are greeted when they come in, the way that we send them home smothered in kisses and we actually launder their personal belongings if possible. We're just very, very attentive, like you would get from a family member.
Speaker 2:Okay, how can our listeners learn more about Canine Campus Dog Daycare and Boarding?
Speaker 3:They can go to our website, which is caninecampusus, and that is spelled out. It's C A N I N E C A M P U S, dot U S as an uncle Sam and, um, they can call us at 719-448-9600. We have a plethora of social media. Um, we're on a ton of platforms and you can link to those from the bottom of our website, and we would love for you to check out our YouTube videos and leave a review. If you're a current customer and have experienced our exceptional care, and come down and see us. We welcome anybody coming at any time. If you're going to bring your dog with you, we do require that you bring back current vaccinations with, but we love surprise visits. You're welcome to walk in the door anytime. My supervisors will drop what they're doing Not if it's a dog, of course. They'll drop them off or whatever they're doing, and they will be happy to answer any questions and give you a tour of the facility awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, joelle, I really appreciate you being on the show. We wish you and your business success. Your business very much success moving forward thank you, appreciate it thank you for listening to the good Neighbor Podcast.
Speaker 1:To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPColoradoSpringscom. That's GNPColoradoSpringscom, or call 719-679-4720.