On the West Side, Making a Dog’s Life More Bearable

By DAN ACKMAN

The cliches fall off the tongue: This business is going to the dogs; it's a dog-eat-dog world; it's a dog's life.  But none of it is true because from a ground-floor space on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Joe Sporn has invented an industry, and may be on his way also to forging a canine empire.

Sporn is a bushy haired, T-shirt-wearing CEO of Yuppie Puppy Inc. and the owner of several other businesses, all oriented to dogs.  Yuppie Puppy is a dog day care facility on West 86th Street.  It allows apartment-dwelling dog owners to drop off their pet on their way to work and pick them up on their way home, and permits the dogs to socialize with their furry brethren.  Once their masters head off for work, the dogs spend their day playing with each other in two large garden-level rooms and a small yard out back.

While there are now as many as 500 dog day care centers nationwide, according to the American Board and Kennel Association, Sporn, who opened shop in 1987, says his was the first.  The idea has gained such currency that there is an outfit out of Calgary called Yuppy Puppy (same name, different spelling, but with no relationship to Sporn) that will sell you a "dog care business package."  

What does Sporn think of having founded an industry?  “I never felt I had to make all the money in the world [from dog day care].  I had a vision in 1987 about day care.  My vision now is about products.”

This vision has led The Sporn Company to market a variety of dog-related products.  Sporn invented the first pull control dog halter in 1989, a specialized leash designed to restrain a dog without choking it.  He says he sells 80,000-90,000 per year.  Sporn sells the halters in pet stores for around $20.  Many more, he says, are sold around the world, but not by him as his patent is for the U.S. only.  During the past year, Sporn designed a less expensive version of the halter, which will be sold in Walmart, other chain stores, and perhaps internationally for $10.  He expects to sell about 300,000 units annually.

Sporn has also patented an adjustable leash for walking two dogs at the same time.  His most recent invention is the dog locker, a cubby designed to hang on the entry-way wall with space for a hanging a leash, a brush, plastic bags and other dog-walking paraphernalia.

Sporn says his dog care business has tripled in the past two years.  Yuppy Puppy cares for about 25 dogs per day on average and charges 20 per dog.  (Its capacity is 30 dogs.)  It also provides overnight boarding for dogs, grooming and other incidental services.  He has seven full-time employees, some of whom are also students. Sporn himself maintains a schedule running the center, marketing products and traveling to trade shows that would put an investment banker to shame.  For all this, Yuppy Puppy figures to gross roughly $200,000 per year, plus what it makes on the sales of its various dog products. 

But for Sporn, his business is not about money.  A dog-owner his whole life—his own dog Reggie, a giant poodle,  accompanies him to the office-- Sporn once studied to be a veterinarian at Columbia University.  But a job as a technician at an animal hospital turned him off it.  Every night he would see sick dogs wasting away in cages.  Often at the end of their stay, the dog would have to be put to sleep.  “What’s best for the dog is really what I care about,” Sporn says.     

This may sound like a salesman talking. But his customers don’t doubt it. Mark Laska, vice-president of an Internet company, brings Chester, a Rhodesian ridgeback, to Yuppie Puppy from his apartment a block away.  He says the workers at Yuppie Puppy seem to really care for the dogs in their care.  The dogs don’t fight, despite the fact that the handlers never seem to have to separate the animals yell at them to stop barking.  And when Chester gets home, Laska says he is dog-tired, which, for a dog, is just plain tired.

Another customer, Sharon Decker, who teaches English at a maritime college, comes from a little farther afield.  But she enjoys the fact that some of the same dogs that her golden retriever puppy Bryce runs with in Central Park also attend Yuppie Puppy.

Both Laska and Decker say they bring their dogs twice a week, generally when they know they are unable to exercise their dogs as much as they’d like.  Others come every day. 

The number of dog day care facilities has grown dramatically.  There are at least a half-dozen in Manhattan, and others like Dog and Company, which pick up the dogs and bus them to Brooklyn or even Westchester County.  Apart from centers, there are untold numbers of professional dog walkers.  But Sporn says the competition doesn’t worry him. 

“If you do a good job, if you’re good to the dogs, you will always have customers.  There are so many dogs in the city,” Sporn says.  He adds, “It’s very difficult to own a dog in the city.”  Unlike the suburbs where one can open the door and let the dog play out back, the city-dweller has to wake up early to walk the dog, and then take it out again after a long day.  Still, the dog might have to spend 12 hours alone.

As the putative founder of the dog day care industry, Sporn says he is hatching plans to franchise his business.  But he will only do so if he can develop a system that will allow him to maintain quality control.  He has just recently found a software package that will enable him to manage multiple facilities.  But he knows he has to be cautious with expansion plans.

He cites one his most loyal customers, the writer David Halberstam, who told him, “Joe, be careful.  Remember you’re franchising real dogs, not hot dogs.”   Sporn says the advice “stayed with me.  These are little souls.  These are our best friends.  You can’t just go for the money.”