Canadians spend $4 billion each year on their pets. More than half goes to the bare necessities: food and trips to the vet. But there's a huge new market for luxury animal products—designer clothes, posh resorts, organic treats, even insurance policies. Why the sudden urge to pamper our pets? Some say it's because people are waiting longer to have children and instead lavishing love on their animals. Others blame a consumer culture gone crazy. One thing's for sure: small-business owners are cashing in
Lisa Brooks
Happy Tails Pet Resort
Huntsville, Ont., started in 1996
"I had a fantasy when I was a child of being surrounded by dozens of dogs. It was my going-to-sleep dream. The dogs would be swimming and running and playing free, and we would all live together in a big brick house. Now I've achieved that dream. This is a place for people who don't like the idea of their dogs being caged, filed away and only being taken out for occasional exercise. It's a resort for pets. We have activities like paw-print painting and pottery, but most of the time the dogs just hang out with each other and have fun. Each dog has its own cubby to sleep and eat in. They're all wood, with Berber carpet in the summer and straw in the winter. There's also a TV and a fireplace. For the larger dogs, there are cabins on the grounds, and couches. The dogs sleep wherever they feel most comfortable. My favourite part of the day is meeting our customers—it's great to see people so happy with the service. Dogs that have been here before are excited when they arrive; they can't wait to be with the other dogs and play all day. At the end of their stay, the dogs are happy to see their owners, of course, but people always tell me that as soon as their pet has said hello and settled in to the car, they fall fast asleep. It's like a switch goes off, and they sleep most of the way home, like a child coming home from camp.
Fraser Telford
Exotic-fish expert, Big Al's
Mississauga, started in 1975
"As a kid, I was into every kind of bug I could catch. Then, when I was 6, our neighbour's son went off to university, and I got his five-gallon tank and some guppies. By my seventh birthday, I was ordering my own fish through the mail. I used to think I would become a marine biologist, but I found that I really enjoyed the retail end of things. I've been at Big Al's for five years. I'm the livestock man-ager for the Mississauga store, and it's like running a small zoo or aquarium. We have over a thousand species of fish, from goldfish and guppies to large angelfish and sharks. We had a 6 1/2-foot nurse shark named English Bob (he was named after one of the gunmen in Unforgiven) who outgrew his tank. So we shipped him off to the West Ed-monton Mall. We arrived at 4 a.m. to get him ready for the flight—even sharks have to get to the airport early.
We have school tours in here all the time. Growing up, I didn't have friends who were into fish, so it's nice to be able to pass on to kids what I've learned. We do a lot of set-ups for companies that want an impressive display tank. The Mandarin restaurants have huge, beautiful tanks. We get a few celebrities in as well—a lot of athletes, guys with disposable income. We order goldfish for Don Cherry straight from a huge farm in Hong Kong, and former Raptor Charlie Villanueva used to come in frequently. We also get guys from the Leafs and Argos. Saltwater tanks are very popular. It used to be that you needed a lot of time and money to keep one, but technology has advanced to the point where it's affordable for the average person. Reef tanks are the high-end items now. We have set-ups that run $18,000 to $20,000, and those are truly im-pressive. We also get parents who come in and say, "I need a salt-water tank and the fish from Finding Nemo. Make it happen." And we do.
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You usually don't notice all the strange creatures you're dealing with, but sometimes a shipment will come in from South America, with something even we don't recognize. We have to pull out the textbooks. Probably the best part of my job is talking to people from all over the world. We have suppliers in Vanuatu, the Philippines—everywhere. Often their English isn't the greatest, but as soon as we start talking about fish, we really communicate. Fish are the common language that we speak."
