The whiteboard inside the front door of Play Dog Excellent (PDX) doesn’t actually read, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” but it might as well.
What the sign does announce, though, is that there are more than 200 dogs on a wait list for daycare at PDX, which also offers agility and other performing events, boarding and training. As much as a balance sheet, the board is a testament to the success the business has enjoyed since opening at the end of 2004.
“We started with three people,” says Nancy Miller, a managing partner in the Dayton Boulevard business. “We celebrated when we got our 10th dog, and now we average 135 daycare dogs per day and run 30 classes every six weeks.”
Miller owns and runs PDX with fellow managing partner Bev Eitner, whose prior career couldn’t be further removed from her current one. Eitner says she put in 35 years with Nabisco and Kraft, and lived in a New Jersey condo.
And she was a cat person.