Nine years ago this week, Friends for Pets was launched! Initially the plan was to offer a local pet care service to a few pet owners living in the Cheddar Valley area of the West Country. A little business that could be run by Becca alongside looking after her own pets and her Animal Science lecturing work. With little advertising, within a couple of months word had spread and three pet carers were recruited to help provide these services (Liz and Margaret, two of these original pet carers are still with us after all this time even though Margaret keeps trying to retire!! Thanks ladies for your amazing work and commitment to FFP).

Within the first couple of years, enquiries started to come in from all over the country and increasingly in some of the more densely populated areas like Bristol and Bath. At one point Becca had 85 pet carers working for her on a part time basis. The company was now running her! To allow things to grow at a more manageable pace, in 2011 FFP was set up to be franchised to allow local managers to manage smaller teams of pet carers therefore maintaining a higher standard of service. The first franchisee was Julia Barnaville, who as well as owning the Bath team now owns a neighbouring franchise also. As of July 2017 we have a few more franchises over the South of the UK and we hope to slowly build on these whilst continually improving the services that we offer to our clients.

It has been a whirlwind of nine years. As with everyone that runs their own business will know, there are lots of ups and downs and it does take your heart and soul to make things work sometimes. The people and pets we have met along our business journey make it all worthwhile and the passion that our team leader and pet carers have is inspirational to work with. Huge thank you’s to all of our managers, pet carers and clients for your support and commitment we will keep trying to improve things everyday! xxx