How Treat Your Dog did week 1 of Coronavirus Lockdown

We’re all now on Coronavirus (Covid 19) lockdown here in the UK. As Treat Your Dog is a family run business, we wanted to create a diary for our daughter to look back on in future years (when’s she’s running it? Who knows!). As the weeks roll into one, I am hoping this reflects how things change as we go. Both as a family and as a business… the lines are blurred for us at the best of times!

Ahead of lockdown

As the country started to lock down, Treat Your Dog had just signed for a new warehouse to add to the warehouse based at the Farm. We have really wondered in this was the right time… time will tell I guess but we'd outgrown the original storage space and had lots of exciting new doggie products arriving during March.

As we headed into the situation we knew that as a pet store we were deemed an essential business. Last week, as this all started to really hit the UK, we had reached out to all our customers on social media and on email to offer our support if there was pet food or products they were struggling to get. We also did this in our local village too. A few had reached out and we were really pleased to be helping people in our small way.

As a family we set out how we would structure the days to enable the business to operate as well as normal for our customers, to make sure our daughter completed her school work and to make sure we all stayed healthy and safe, both mentally and physically.

Let’s see how this actually works out! These coming weeks of blogs will tell you too…

Week 1 Day 1 (23rd March 2020)

So yes day one (after a couple of hours picking orders) we started at 9am with PE with Joe Wicks. Have you been doing it? Well we all loved it on day one…. Energised and feeling as though we had earned our breakfast. At this rate I’ll be slim again…maybe?

Parcels dispatched and all customers replied to that have contacted us over the weekend. Phone diverts set up for opening hours to make sure we don't miss calls.

A quick dart to the wholesaler as a local customer has been let down with their dog and cat food delivery. Added more stock to ranges we have seen an increase in – toys, teeth clean finger pads etc and added a few new ones as a range I have wanted to add for a while has come in – shampoo bars – try them if you need shampoo they smell amazing! Might try one for myself... yes we can use them too… even if they are meant for the dog!

Delivered said cat and dog food, to one very happy customer after dropping all other stock to the warehouse. The picture is of our daughter who came to the new warehouse…. Just to do the splits there…. And some "tik tok" dancing? Who’d have thought….

After work we tidied up a spare bedroom and created a small music space for Charlotte so she can escape there whenever she wants (aka get her out of her bedroom!). Who will be first to use it?

Quick walk with Pepper and Boo, bit of tea and sit down! Who said lockdown was going to be boring….

Day 2

Well the announcement came last night to us all that it is a full on lockdown and that as an online business it as okay to continue to trade. So this is it… what we’ve all needed them to do to make it clearer.

After PE with Joe again… I can’t feel legs! Walking around the warehouse is comedy! Good job none of you could see me!

Then a great day of testing new products that haven’t previously been tested, adding them to the site and photographing anything we needed to. It’s like Christmas whenever we have new things in… especially for the dogs.

So home-schooling going well, Charlotte is pretty self-motivated but on a break she headed into her new music space, rooted through an old blanket box and found these old dressing up bits! Brightened the day anyway….

A different dog walk now as we used to park at a nearby nature park. But Boo seemed to have enjoyed it all the same.

Another succesful day (but we're only on day 2 of how many?!)

Day 3 to 5

These days all blurred into one...

Anyone else finding they don’t know the day of the week?

The mornings go like this... PE with Joe (on the days I could use my legs!), home schooling, parcels done at the warehouse and all customer orders despite us being incredibly busy, are out on time each day! Happy Treat Your Dog, happy customers….

The one benefit of then working the rest of the day at home has been lunch in the sun in the garden… amazing! Who else has done this?

The dog walks up the field where we live have been interesting.. No one around so perfect for these current times, but old cow pats, sheep poo and dead animals are meaning the dogs diets are somewhat yuk!

Thursday evening we stood out by our front door and did the clap for our carers in support of all at the NHS that are working so hard for all of our health right now. It was quite emotional and make more so as we are fairly remote and with the lack of traffic nearby we could actually hear others doing it (rare for us to hear anything!).

A positive on the Friday was our local egg farm delivered us some free eggs to our doorstop as our neighbour has the best contacts!

I am thankful to all who are helping us in anyway, food supplies, medical supplies and of course everyone at hospitals and doctor surgeries across the country. Aren’t we lucky to have an NHS at times like these?

I’m not sure this was what we expected for this first week. But in the midst of this strange situation we all find ourselves in, there were elements of pleasure. And the dogs are loving having us all around every day, every hour! Are yours?

Has anyone else found the positives? I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to, with or without your dogs, so please do comment below.

Until next time….