Halifax Dog Friendly Downtown"s Time has come

I subscribe to a google alert for “dog friendly” – and an article about “Saratoga Springs Dog Friendly Downtown” came through a couple days ago – and it’s a fabulous initiative that the city of Saratoga down in the States has.

A whole bunch of businesses have realized that dog owner’s really do love their dogs – and they love to spend money and be with their dogs at the same time – so they’ve banded together and made their businesses pet friendly – and put up logos on their doors – they have special events for pet owners – and fun stuff like that.

They have a blog at http://dogfriendlydowntown.blogspot.com/  and right now they’re having a scavenger photo hunt for pet owners to bring them into the member businesses. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

When I went to the blog it struck me – the number of businesses that they have participating doesn’t sound like too many more than I have listed on my website as being dog friendly JUST in downtown Halifax – NOT including everywhere else in HRM. Altogether – there’s over 150 resources and dog friendly listings on the Charlie loves Halifax site now – and there’s TWENTY-SEVEN dog friendly stores in the downtown core of Halifax.

The Saratoga Dogfriendly downtown Association has thirty six participants.

I’d say that Halifax is doing pretty good as a dog friendly destination.

If those businesses got together and actually catered to the dog owners that they’re attracting to their stores – they could actually make a lot more money – and we dog owners would have a lot more access to fabulous services – and be spending more time with our chosen life companions.

I think we need to do some thinking…..