Jon Kay founded the dog friendly scheme in Bury St Edmunds, which was recently named as the most dog friendly town in the UK, Here, the owner of Camp Tails Doggy Daycare explains what it means
Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Jon, and I am the owner and Managing Director of Camp Tails, a dog daycare centre, hotel and grooming salon located in Bury St Edmunds. We specialise in dog care and assisting dog’s socialisation and development in our bespoke facility. We have tunnels, climbing frames, balls and toys galore!
I have been married for 15 years and have two amazing Labradors Loki (10 and a half years old) and Freya (2 years old). I love dogs, travelling, golf and photography!
What led you to starting up Camp Tails Doggy Daycare and what were you doing before?
Very cliche, but I had a “life too short” epiphany. I was working a 9-5 office job as a Quantity Surveyor. It was a good job, but I was feeling unfulfilled and down already, not feeling I had direction, living to go away on holiday a few times a year. We lost 3 family members in the space of a few months, which triggered something within me, wanting to take control and find something that would make me happy and bring purpose instead of working Monday to Friday waiting on a next holiday escape.
I was fortunate in my job that I was allowed an office dog (a request off-the-cuff on newly finding availability of a puppy). My employer was kind enough to allow him to join the team as an office dog, so he spent his days by my side at the computer and our breaks spent playing, training and getting out for some valuable exercise and (not that I knew it at the time) mental wellness breaks on walks. HE was certainly a life changer and subtle catalyst that led me to seek a complete career change, giving up 12 years in civil and mechanical and electrical engineering to pursue something in the animal field.
An opportunity presented itself in the form of a franchise that, although didn’t work out as planned, gave me the foundation to create Camp Tails a few years later and grow it into what it is today. Dog care, utilising my love of behaviour and psychology in dogs now seems like such an obvious fit, but at the time it wasn’t as widely spread and accepted as a service so was widely considered a risk as we invested everything we had into making this idea become something real.
Are you Suffolk born and raised? Where does your love of dogs come from?
Mostly yes, I moved to Bury St Edmunds as a young child before moving and growing up in Stowmarket, I moved to Ipswich as an adult and moved back closer to a village by Bury St Edmunds shortly after starting my business in 2016. We love the countryside for our dog walks so the village life is perfect.
I have always been an animal lover and grew up with no less than 4 cats in our household at any given time. I love the bond a human can establish with an animal. When I moved out however, we found that my severe allergies were animal induced so refrained from having pets for a period other than a rabbit to give us our animal company.
It wasn’t until many years later that I spent some prolonged time with a friend’s dog and something clicked – I wasn’t having any kind of reaction to a dog. Shortly after an opportunity presented itself and we welcomed Loki into our life and haven’t looked back since!
He quickly became my best friend as we worked in my office together, the highlight of my day being when we could go out for lunch walks and do some training. I realised early on this was a bond on another level to cats (no offence to our feline friends). I became fascinated with our innate connection and began to read up on dog behaviour and psychology and found I had a natural ability to communicate with him, as mentioned above, this led to my drastic career change into animal care.
And what led you to founding #dogfriendlybse?
Strangely, it was one of my first goals alongside my business when we opened, as a “community project”. I figured I could use my expertise to help the local dogs in more ways than just our day care.
As a family we loved travelling places with Loki, and the Peak District was a regular favourite. I was blown away by how dog friendly Bakewell was, it was almost abnormal if you couldn’t take your dog somewhere. I had a vision of wanting this for Bury St Edmunds but quickly realised it wasn’t a simple task to establish where you could and couldn’t take your four-legged buddy.
As I was growing my business, I also recognised how important external socialisation and desensitisation opportunities were for dogs to help them become rounded, confident canines who tend to cause less issues. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and see if I could try and establish a list of Bury dog friendly locations. One thing we do when travelling with Loki is look up the location and try and establish a few places we can go together. This proved difficult in some places and next to impossible locally, so I figured a database/ Instagram central page would be super helpful.
I believed it would be beneficial to our dogs and their role in the community; small businesses (not missing out on those walking their dogs past as they browse the town, and welcoming them inside instead); and outwardly the local tourism aspect, encouraging people to visit with our countless hotels, B&Bs and places you can come and stay with your dog before exploring the Suffolk countryside.
One of our day care customers happened to be a local councillor (Clive Springett) who jumped at the chance to support the scheme and together we got help from the local Business Improvement District and tourism board – and dogfriendlyBSE was really able to take off. We had easier access to all the business with the collaboration (much better than my initial door to door with dog bowls and stickers!) and quickly added to our growing list.
What does it mean to you for Bury to win the most dog friendly place in the country? Who would you like to thank?
Genuinely, super proud and excited for the town. It’s such a feel-good badge/title to hold, in my opinion as a dog lover and a dog professional. I love the fact that far and beyond our area people will know when visiting that dogs are welcome!
Most importantly I think the town has Loki to thank! He is certainly the inspiration and drive to accomplish this, but also the recognised poster boy and always media ready. Although Loki and I are probably the faces of the campaign, it was a team effort that wouldn’t have reached as many as it has without them – from the BID, Mike Kirkham and Mark Cordell; Sue Warren from Bury St Edmunds and Beyond, continued support from the council and Clive Springett for helping us get off the ground and make contacts!
Then of course the local businesses who have joined the campaign and do their bit and our wonderful community of well-behaved dogs that represent us and show how great it can be.
I truly think Bury St Edmunds deserves the title.
What are your hopes for a dog friendly future?!
The hope is to continue to expand and offer some new and interesting things to the mix to further develop the tourism appeal to visit our town. This year we’ve had our first dog friendly Bury Tour Guides historical tour; we are planning to help Abbeygate cinema offer more dog friendly screenings of new and older films and I hope sometime in the future to bring back a dog festival to the town which hasn’t returned post pandemic. Another great chance to bring and meet other dogs and celebrate what they give to us.
Although I am biased and Bury will always be number one, I would love to see other places take the same initiative and see the hidden benefit that something like this can bring.
Where can people find out more about what you do?
Camp Tails is all over socials – highly recommend our Instagram stories for daily video highlights to make you smile – @camptailsBSE and our website is full of what we offer and how to register. For Dog Friendly BSE we are primarily on Instagram and you can see our stickers and dog bowls around town to identify quickly where you can go. The full list of our locations can be found here. Visiting Bury with your pooch? Feel free to tag us and we will share the joy!
Dog Friendly Bury St Edmunds was formed with a partnership between Bury St Edmunds Town Council, Camp Tails Doggy Daycare, Our Bury St Edmunds Business Improvement District (BID) and the tourism brand Bury St Edmunds and Beyond six years ago.
Featured image of Jon Kay and Loki – supplied
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