DogBoy's Origin Story | Dog Behavior & Training | DogBoy's DogVlog
With Courtney Emken and Bart Emken, CPDT-KA
Concept by Courtney Emken
We hope everyone had a good holiday and a happy new year. We wanted to start something different in 2020, so Bart and I sat down and shared the history and development of DogBoys Dog Ranch. We hope you enjoy hearing the story of how we started and grew into the wonderful place you are bringing your cherished pups to today. We really enjoyed living it and being able to tell the story today.
Transcript:
- It is rumored that people want to know our story.
- Yes, maybe you like how we started or.
- How we started, how it was when we grew. What we do now. I meet so many people when I give them a tour and they, you know, I show them the property and then they are like ...
- Impressive.
- How did you start? What do you mean, you were the first pet care facility where dogs could play together in Texas? What?
- Well, it all started in 1991.
- Yes.
- I was back at school. I graduated from UT, hated my job. Do you remember that?
- You have a degree in advertising.
- Yeah, I hated my job in advertising. Back in school trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do. And I saw a seeing guide dog stopping a guy from falling down a flight of stairs and it was like my revelation, my moment with a lightbulb. Where I've been, I want to do that. I want to help dogs, help people. And so I went to class and as you like it there was a sign advertising a dog training class or a person teaching positive dog training. So I talked to her and she interviewed me to see how I was handling my own dog even though I had no skills at all. I spoke to my vet who got me a job at a local kennel that has been around for decades. And then I have to tell my fiancé, you.
- We were engaged at the time.
- That I would quit my job and work in a kennel for a minimum wage. But I got a raise.
- Right after college.
- I have to raise $ 0.50 in two weeks if I've done everything right.
- And what was the minimum wage then?
- $ 5.25.
- I think it was like $ 4.50. Was it really that good?
- Yeah, and I thought wait a second. Wait, we're getting married. I told everyone I was marrying an advertising man. He's a kennel technician who earns minimum wage. Okay, great, I'm still at it.
- But I got a job in one too, shortly after that I got a job in a pet shop and there I learned about dog food and when I worked for Diana I learned about dog behavior and debunking the pack mentality. Just like everything I've done and that's where the name Dog Boy comes from because one of my good friends kept asking me what are you doing man? Every answer was dog. So all I did was the canine world.
- Yes, and we weren't called Dog Boys in the beginning. We had a different name.
- We had different names. And so it grew slowly from there. I started teaching dogs at the Humane Society and got on trains for Diana.
- You were a pet that sat for them.
- I sat as a pet and started getting on trains at my own house. We needed a bigger space, so we went out on a huge branch and, with the help of my parents, could find that space.
- It was twice as much as we can afford cold.
- Yeah, it was definitely scary being as young as us. And then we went to a bank and said hey.
- Yeah, but should I take it from here for the first two years?
- Yes.
- So that's still in the early years, but for the first two years we were open we had an outdoor kennel behind the house that was just a chain link fence on gravel. There was a roof over it.
- The roof, my father helped me build it.
- Yes, dogs slept in boxes in our garage at night and that was all we had for two years.
- That was the office.
- And we both had full-time jobs like looking after dogs over lunch here. But his job was a home job, so ...
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