A one-stop premium pet supply destination is officially opening its doors in Mountain Grove on April 5 at its 20th St. location.
With nearly 15 years of experience in the pet supplies industry, co-owner and managing partner Brad Taylor is ready to help pet owners ensure that their pet is “happy, healthy and well-cared for.”
“We have received so much feedback, with hundreds to thousands of messages of people saying, ‘oh thank goodness, I don’t have to drive to Springfield any more,’” Taylor said.
For all of the food products on sale at the location, Taylor puts them through what is known as the Urban Dogg metric. He ensures the food has no corn, wheat, soy or dyes.
“The two big allergens for dogs are wheat and chicken,” Taylor noted. “…A lot of what is going to be done here is education.”
It is known that most pet owners tend to feed their dogs the same store bought food filled with product not best for dogs while also giving them only one source of protein for most of their lives.
“You need to rotate proteins with dogs,” Taylor said. “Get them the different nutrients from the different proteins….If you give a child junk food like Twinkies, they will eat, but they still need to balance things out for meaningful nutrition…I’m a big believer that you get out of them with what you put in them.”
The location also features items with locally-sourced beef, Urban Dogg sticks, supplements, frozen and dehydrated food, and even dog yogurt and ice cream. Cat, bird and rabbit food is also available. Other products for sale include toys, harnesses, leashes, grooming tools, shampoos, ear cleaner, pee pads and more. CBD products are also available.
Taylor said he can help customers with special orders for food products, as long as the item meets the Urban Dogg metric.
Urban Dogg’s retail location provides pet owners an alternative to ordering products through services like Chewy or Amazon, and will likely provide customers an opportunity to save money, especially those who normally pay to have frozen items and heavy dog food bags shipped to their home.
“We will also find comparables,” Taylor added.
Since Taylor still currently runs similar pet stores in the Denver, Colo. region, he is able to keep costs down benefiting from wholesale pricing on his orders.
Taylor is no stranger to the pet supply industry. For the past 14 years, Taylor ran Urban Dogg Colorado, which is the largest privately owned grooming operation in the Denver, Colo. region. At each of his three locations, a pet supply operation was set up much like the one that now calls Mountain Grove home. The big Colorado operation employed up to 28 groomers. The Mountain Grove location will not offer a dog grooming service. When purchasing products at Urban Dogg Mountain Grove, customers will be a part of the Astro Loyalty Program, which involves 3,000 brands from dog food, to toys and treats.
Examples of specials may include purchasing a set number of bags of dog food and getting the next one for free.
“We track all of that in our system,” Taylor said. “Every brand is different.”
Meanwhile, Urban Dogg is also donating 5% of their sales to the community. The first locations to benefit from this will be Unique Services Workshop and FosterAdopt Connect. Employees at Unique Services have also been hired by Urban Dogg to place labels on their own brand name products to be sold in the store. Meanwhile, a round-up opportunity at the terminal will provide donated funds to the Grove Community Cat Coalition, which recently formed in Mountain Grove, to focus efforts in helping the feral cats community.
Urban Dogg will officially open on Friday, April 5 with a Grand Opening on April 6. At that event, there will be the hot dog vendor Hound Dawgs, balloons, free Bear Creek Bakery cookies dog treats and dogs will be welcomed in the store. The hours of operation are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday. The store is closed on Sundays. For more information, call 417-349-6738, or visit Urban Dogg on Facebook or on the web at urbandoggmountiangrove.com. “I’m looking forward to meeting everybody in the community,” Taylor said.
