Join Us in Celebrating 10 Fabulous Years!
Happy Hound is celebrating 10 years in business this month and we are celebrating on Thursday March 20th with a Cupcake Extravaganza and a Special Adoption event hosted by Hopalong & Second Chance Animal Rescue! Come join us on the 20th from 4pm – 7pm with Kate’s Cupcake Truck. Hopalong will be showcasing some adoptable cuties for you to take home from 4pm – 6pm!
In the beginning – When I moved to the bay area in 2004 with my dog, Rennie Mae, I needed a facility that was a fun and active dog daycare where she could have serious play and burn off lots of energy in a safe and supervised environment with overnight supervised care. I looked around and couldn’t find a facility that met my needs. So I opened one!
When I look back on these past 10 years, I remember opening day, March 22, 2004. Walking into the warehouse with my two dogs. The warehouse was empty and I was here all alone. I recall my first client, a yellow lab by the name of Razzberry. I remember thinking that I needed to hire my first employee about two months later. About six months into opening, I expanded my space from 6,800 sq feet to 9,000 sq feet and added the dog boarding department. About 9 months in I told my dad I couldn’t imagine having 50 dogs here. Now we have over 100. That’s a comment he often reminds me of! Then Google noticed Happy Hound because of our success with their Adwords campaign. The Google video was born and is hosted on our website! Then in 2010 we introduced our Board & Train department due to a growing need and clients requesting top quality training. And we grew! As we grew so did the awards of appreciation, and I want to thank you, our clients for the recognition:
- Winner! Best Doggy Daycare 2014 – Bay Woof
- Runner Up! Best Dog Boarding 2014 – Bay Woof
- Best Boarding Oakland Magazine 2013 – 2008
- Best Place to Leave Your Pooch – 2012 – East Bay Express
- Best of City Search and Favorite Yelp Review – 2007, 2008
- We are featured in Web Marketing for Dummies, 3rd Edition
- Google featured Happy Hound in their Google’s Economic Impact, 2010
- And numerous Newspaper Articles!
We are able to provide jobs for close to 40 dog lovers, we provide health insurance, soon a 401k and complimentary dog services for our employees. We provide catered lunch the first Friday of every month and our employees love it here. And I appreciate the work they do everyday!
What’s next? We introduced new HD Webcam’s this month for viewing your dogs in the highest definition available. Stay tuned for our new website. I am so proud of our new look and feel, it’s going to be so much easier for our clients to access our services with this new design on any device. And we added an additional vehicle to our fleet – for the trainers to serve our training clients at the drop of a bone, we are there!
We are excited for our future, and look forward to spending it with you and your happy hounds!