Today we’d like to introduce you to Casey Madden.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Rock Hill Pet Care started around Christmas of 2019, and honestly, we didn’t start with some grand plan to build a big pet care business. We started small, caring for dogs from our home, and it grew pretty naturally from there.
As more families found us and came back, we realized there was a real need for something a little different from the traditional large boarding or daycare facility. We wanted dogs to have plenty of room to be outside, play, and just be dogs, while still keeping the environment personal enough that we actually know the dogs and families in our care.
Over the years, we’ve grown quite a bit, learned a lot, and probably changed our minds about how to do things more times than we can count. One of the biggest lessons has been that bigger isn’t necessarily better. Today, we’re actually much more intentional about growth than we were in the beginning. We keep our groups manageable, get to know new dogs before accepting them for regular care, and aren’t afraid to say when we don’t think our environment is the right fit for a particular pup.
Rock Hill Pet Care is still family-owned and operated by the two of us, right here on our property in Rock Hill. What started as a small idea has turned into a business and community we’re really proud of. Some of the dogs we care for have been coming to us for years, and getting to build those relationships with both the dogs and their people has probably been our favorite part of the whole thing.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not! We joke that running a dog business means you’re working with two things that are completely unpredictable: dogs and people.
One of our biggest challenges has been learning that growth isn’t always a good thing. In the beginning, it was really exciting every time the phone rang or a new customer reached out. Over time, though, we learned that saying “yes” to everyone can actually take away from the experience we want to provide. Not every dog enjoys a group environment, and not every family is looking for the type of care we offer. Learning to slow down, be more selective, and occasionally say, “We may not be the best fit for your pup,” was hard, but it has made our business much better.
There have also been plenty of growing pains behind the scenes. When your business is on your own property, there isn’t much separation between work and home. Dogs don’t care that it’s Christmas morning, pouring rain, 100 degrees outside, or that you’d really like to sleep in for once. They still need to eat, play, go outside, and be cared for.
We’ve also had to learn almost every part of running a business as we went: scheduling, customer service, policies, technology, facilities, finances, and everything in between. We’ve made mistakes, changed systems that weren’t working, and learned not to keep doing something just because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
It hasn’t always been smooth, but those challenges have helped us figure out what we want Rock Hill Pet Care to be. At this point, success for us isn’t about having the most dogs or becoming the biggest facility. It’s having a group of dogs who genuinely enjoy being here, families who trust us, and a business that we’re still happy to run.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Rock Hill Pet Care is a family-owned dog daycare and boarding business located on our property in Rock Hill, South Carolina. We offer daycare and overnight boarding in a smaller, home-based setting with lots of outdoor space and a big emphasis on knowing the individual dogs in our care.
If there’s one thing we’re known for, it’s probably that our dogs get to be dogs here. We have about two acres with large fenced play areas where they can run, play, explore, get dirty, splash in the water, or find a shady spot and relax. We balance that outdoor time with plenty of rest throughout the day, because we’ve learned that a tired dog is great, but an overtired dog is basically a toddler who skipped a nap.
What really sets us apart, though, is that we’re intentionally selective about the dogs we accept. We aren’t trying to fill every available space. New dogs go through a meet and greet and trial process so we can make sure they’re comfortable here and that our environment is a good fit for them. Sometimes the answer is that it isn’t, and we’re okay with that. We’d much rather be honest with a family than put a dog into an environment where they’re stressed or unhappy.
Because we stay relatively small, we also get to know our dogs really well. We know who the best friends are, who needs a little extra encouragement, who would happily spend the entire day chasing a ball, and who would prefer to sit next to us and supervise everyone else. Many of our families have been with us for years, so these dogs really do start to feel like part of our extended family.
We offer traditional boarding as well as a limited number of spots in our sunroom for dogs who may be more comfortable in a home-like environment. We also offer daycare and a variety of little extras during their stay, but our focus has always been on the quality of their day rather than how many services we can sell.
Brand-wise, we’re probably most proud that Rock Hill Pet Care still feels personal even as the business has grown. We don’t want to be everything to everyone, and we don’t want to become the biggest dog care facility in the area. We want to be the place where the right dogs are genuinely excited to pull into the driveway and their people can leave knowing we already know exactly who just jumped out of their car.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that when you run a business from your home, you have to be really intentional about making sure the business doesn’t completely take over your life.
There’s no commute home at the end of the day and no office door you can shut and leave behind. We can look out the window and see work, and there’s almost always something that could be cleaned, fixed, answered, scheduled, or improved. In the early years, it was really easy to feel like we should always be working simply because the work was right there.
We also have two kids, and they’ve grown up right alongside the business. Finding the balance between being business owners, parents, a married couple, and just regular people who occasionally want to leave the house without talking about dogs has probably been one of our biggest challenges.
We’re much better now about protecting our family time, scheduling time away, and accepting that not everything has to be done immediately. We even close completely for a week every summer, which would have felt impossible to us when we first started.
The biggest lesson has probably been that building a successful business doesn’t mean much if you build it in a way that leaves no room to enjoy the life you were building it for in the first place.
Pricing:
- Daycare: $28+/day
- Boarding: $55+/night
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rockhillpetcare.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rockhillpetcare
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rockhillpetcare
