How many times have you had to adjust your work schedule to get your pet to the vet? Or called the boarding facility near your home to find out that the only spot left means an inconvenient drive to a sister facility on the other side of town? Or that grooming appointment, made months ago, now falls on a day when it's raining cats and dogs and you just don't want to deal with it.
Well, now you don't have to.
Just as COVID-19 began forcing everyone inside, The Ark launched a pet taxi service to get animals where they need to go, whether you can (or want to) go with them or not.
While seemingly timed out of necessity, it's an idea owner Jay Floyd has been kicking around for years, and necessity won't stop when the travel bans are over, he says.
"I've launched a number of businesses and they're usually all based off a need or requests in the community. ... Over the years many people have asked us, 'Gosh, if you just had a pickup and drop-off service,'" says Floyd, who operates four day care, boarding and grooming facilities around town.
Get going
To sign up or learn more about Go Wag’n, visit thearkspa.com/www/blog/viewpost/69.
During the first few weeks of the new "Go Wag'n" service, it was most likely hospital employees or delivery drivers - who saw their work ramp up while many others found themselves out of work - who were most likely taking advantage of The Ark's offerings.
"Unfortunately it's the timing of everything, especially with startup businesses," Floyd says, "but we felt we had to put something out there if someone really did need our service."
The pet taxi works very much like Uber, he explains. Customers pay a base rate of $5, plus $2.50 per mile. Pets can go anywhere in the Greater Chattanooga area, whether that's to the groomer's or to Grandma's.
"They're not bound to bring their dog to The Ark; it's just a service for anybody to go anywhere, even to competitors," Floyd notes, though customers do get a taxi discount if dropping their pet by The Ark.
All the taxi drivers are Ark staff members, not only licensed and bonded, but experienced in handling animals, he adds. And that doesn't just mean cats and dogs. Caged exotics are also welcome.
The service operates on a typical workday timeframe, the hours when someone may be most likely to need a little extra help, but it isn't relegated to those hours. "We have normal operating hours but we do special requests, and there's not necessarily an extra charge," Floyd says. "We felt we really needed to at least establish a set of hours, but we know we're going to have special cases."
Years of sending employees to longtime customers' houses to find their key and pick up their pet even before the taxi service taught him that. Now, anyone can sign a waiver to have their pet picked up or dropped off when they're not home.
"Once any business gets rolling and you start to figure out how it's going to go and you have issues ... you start rolling out other things," Floyd says. "We're only going to continue to evolve it."