When Sean Lidstone needed a place for his beloved border collie to stay while he was at work, he and his mother invested in a small retail space in south Edmonton. They called the pet product store Sadie’s Pet Stop, after his dog. “When I worked in the old retail store, people would come in and bend right over to say hello to Sadie, and then stand up and look at me and ask, ‘Do you work here?’” says Sean. “But we’d get a lot of inquiries from folks – customers – who were looking for places to be able to leave their dogs for daycare.”
So Sean jumped into his truck and began searching the city, looking for places to recommend. “I would have liked to have been able to make recommendations, but I didn’t really feel comfortable doing so with what was available at the time,” he says. “We were looking for a place with enough room indoors and also outdoors, not just 10-by-10 kennels and a chain-link fence. We were also looking at the qualifications of the people who were there, and the supervision provided.”