Eagle River Pet Business Grows Thanks to Customer Loyalty and Support from ‘My People’

Towne is excited about other upcoming opportunities, including next year’s Bear Paw Festival, where Adorable Pets will debut a “Wagging Den,” a spot that will offer canine watering stations, free bandanas, and more.

Offering daycare in addition to grooming is Towne’s way of giving back to her loyal customers. They are, she says, the reason her business survived COVID-19.

“They’re My People”

Towne knew Alaska would become her home when she first visited the state in February of 2011, and she saw the Eagle River pet groomer as her anchor.

“I called Adorable Pets right after I went back to Colorado, just looking to see what they had available,” Towne recalls. At that time, Debbie Hale owned the shop. “Debbi asked if I had any experience, and I told her I had twenty years of experience working with dogs. She said, ‘Can you move here now?’”

Towne couldn’t pick up and move that minute, but in just a few months, she had relocated to Alaska. Five days after she arrived, she started working at Adorable Pets.

When Hale retired, Towne bought the business. That was in 2019. Six months later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Because she’d just bought the business, Towne didn’t have the history of paperwork she would have needed to qualify for government grants to keep Adorable Pets afloat. Instead, she scrimped and made cuts to her personal budget and relied on the tight-knit Eagle River community.

“We did curbside service. I redid the bathing room so we could be far enough apart to work safely. We sanitized everything. We took our own temperatures twice a day. We went through quite a bit just to remain open,” she describes.

It was important to stay open, she adds, not only to serve her clients but because she felt a responsibility to her employees.

“I have, now, seven people who rely on my business for their own families. If it’s just me, I’ll get another job and I’ll recover. But I don’t want anything devastating to ever happen to my employees. They’re not my people—but they’re still my people, you know?”

Adorable Pets is still working to recover from its COVID-19 days. Expansion has been a tumultuous effort, involving permitting snafus, missing historical information about the new space, and surprise electrical costs. Towne credits completion of the renovation to a friend named Jon, who gave Towne a hand when she first moved to Alaska too.

“If it wasn’t for him, my shop wouldn’t even be running. He’s the one who’s done all the renovations and behind the scenes work,” she shares. “I couldn’t ask for better friends, employees, and family, including Jon and his boys, to help me through everything.”