The vacuum gets a lot of use at the Coover household. Otherwise, dog hair would overtake the carpeting.
Columbus residents Chris and Brittany Coover share a deep passion for dogs that touches both their personal and professional lives. The couple, married since 2016, own both BJ’s Dog Grooming, a store offering pet grooming and daycare services, and Coover’s Golden Retrievers, a business where the pair breed Golden Retrievers. Meanwhile, eight Golden Retrievers and two children under three years old reside at the Coover household.
“It is a lot of work,” Chris said. “Between eight dogs and two kids, it’s a constant workplace. It’s almost like you go to work to have a break from being at work at home. But the dogs give us joy, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing all of this. It’s fun to see our kids grow up with it and experience the same kind of love and passion we have for it.”
The Coovers started their breeding business in 2016 with a litter of puppies in their home, then built a 10×10 building, which later turned into a 14×20 building as the business grew. Wanting to expand even further, Chris is working on a 30×60 multipurpose metal building equipped with a fenced-in yard for their farm animals, dogs and workshop space. Chris hopes the building, which is located off Highway 69, will be completed by July of 2021.
“We’re building that building to provide better services for the dogs and the eventual owners of those puppies,” Chris said. “Money and time are always an issue. I’m trying to do all the work myself (on the facility) and I have a full-time job here at the store. So it just takes time for us to get going. We have all the kennels up and have a drainage system in place. We plan to insulate the shop and put a heat and cooling unit in for the dogs and get the fencing put up and installed.”
Chris said the most convenient way for consumers to explore the breeding business is through the Coover’s Golden Retrievers Facebook page, which displays photos of all available dogs past and present.
“They’ll message us on Facebook, we’ll get to know them a little bit and figure out who they are,” Chris said. “We’re able to discuss what we’re able to provide for the dogs and what we’d expect in return for giving you a dog.”
Chris, originally from Kansas and who has lived in Columbus since arriving in town in 2011 to serve at the Air Force base, added the family views their commitment to the puppies as a “forever deal.”
“We make sure the dogs are microchipped before they leave just in case they go missing, so someone will be able to track them down,” Chris said. “That way we’re able to call them if by some chance their dog got out. We have a faith-based contract (with a potential customer) where the dog isn’t just going to just be chained outside and just be an outside dog. We want to make sure that it’s part of the family.
“We don’t want to just sell a dog, we want to give a dog a family,” he continued. “On top of that we kind of take responsibility for the life of the pup. We try to be a source of information to them to help them figure out training, dog food and other stuff. If they ever decide to rehome the dog, that’s in our contract that they’ll give us the first right to refusal so we can make sure the dog goes to another good home. It’s a forever deal and part of our life.”
Brittany, who has resided in Mississippi her whole life, has owned BJ’s Dog Grooming since 2013.
“It’s been great,” she said. “It’s had its ups and downs but it’s been great.”
Owning that business hasn’t been without challenges. The original location of the building was decimated by the 2019 Columbus tornado, with the couple eventually building a new place of operation at 81 Wilcutt Block Rd.
“We thought we were going to be done, and then we just kind of looked at each other and decided we’d do it again,” Chris said. “We can’t just give up.”
Then not even two years later, a raging pandemic threw another complication into the mix.
“It was rough,” Chris said. “Having the pandemic in the middle of the time where all people travel and go on vacations with that boarding business we usually take on, it just hit a cliff and jumped off. The grooming stayed afloat and we were able to keep everyone getting their paychecks and we never missed a beat and kept going. You have to roll with the punches.”
Between both businesses, their family and their workload, one thing has remained constant for the couple.
“We’d figure we’d never go without dogs,” Chris said.
Hodge is the former sports editor for The Dispatch.
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