As we approach our tenth year in business I realize it had been awhile since I shared the Stable Hands origin story. Let me pain the scene. I had finished my dog walking for the day for a company in Northern Virginia and my wife, Lara, was barn sitting for the evening. Alone and lonely I decided to take a drive to try and find a new place to hike. I drove out to a place called Lake Fairfax. I don’t remember where exactly it is located but I had to drive through Great Falls to get there. I remember driving down the roads there and walking through the park. I felt a large sense of dissatisfaction with the lack of nature at the nature park.
It was driving home when I started to think. Northern Virginia felt vice like. My wife and I had long ago outgrown our 500 sq ft condo. We had also outgrown the traffic of Northern Virginia, but we were happy. We were happy working for a pet sitting company taking care of people’s pets. Our days were spent walking dogs and Lara’s nights were spent taking care of horses and mine were spent covering the Washington Nationals for a local DC blog.
Still, we felt like we needed to break free. Driving on that road in Great Falls, surrounded by massive modern houses on large plots of land I started to think about Lara’s barn sitting. She was gone for the evening and I was driving home to an empty condo. All I had was time to think.
This barn sitting thing felt like a future, but it needed a name. Who takes care of horses? Stable Hands. And who would you want caring for your pet? Someone with Stable Hands. It was perfect. Thus a name was born, but that was it. It was only a name. A really good name if I do say so myself, but a name can only get you so far.
I believe I called my wife right then and there to tell her the name of our new business. I can’t recall her reaction but I do know that within a couple weeks we had a website, a business license, and were working with a graphic design friend of ours on our branding. All of a sudden we were in business, but we were still working for another pet sitting company, living in a 500 sq ft condo, and had to sit in Northern Virginia traffic to go anywhere.
As for working for the other pet sitting company we took that very seriously. We never tried to snake a client from them and since they used independent contractors they encouraged their workers to have their own business licenses and insurance. We did mention ourselves to neighbors and friends, and that’s where our first dog and cat clients came from.
The owner of the cake shop Lara worked at used us, the neighbor of one of her midday dog walks, and a couple neighbors of a dog I walked signed up. We had a handful of our own clients now, but were about to shake everything up even more.
My father had been trying to get us to move to Virginia Beach for awhile at this point, but the conditions of the move had never worked out. We didn’t want to share a house with him and were worried about what would happen to our independence if we allowed him too much generosity, but this time a balance was struck, and in November of 2015 we moved ourselves and Stable Hands Pet Care and Services to Virginia Beach.
It has been a wild time since then with some ups and downs, but mostly ups. Next year will be our ten year anniversary of being in business and we’re looking to continue our upward trend with our best year yet.