Taking care of (dog) business

Thirty years ago, Greg Milam worked at the Big B Drugs in Bluff Park as a teenager.

After graduating from Berry High School in 1993, he went to Auburn University and then spent more than two decades working all over the country in the car auction business, but now he’s back in Hoover and working in the same building that once housed Big B.

Only this time, he’s not helping in a pharmacy. He’s running his own business.

Milam opened the Birmingham area’s first Camp Bow Wow, a dog day care, boarding and grooming business, in November. He’s taking up about two-thirds of the former Big B Drugs building between Bluff Park Village and Shades Mountain Plaza.

The building most recently was owned by Hoover Fitness, but the owner, Jason Cerniglia, sold it to an investment group and leased one-third of the space, leaving the rest for another tenant.

Milam spent 21 years in the Cox Enterprises car auction business, most recently as the general manager of a location in Seattle, but he decided he wanted to do something different and get closer to family, so he moved back to Hoover.

“I always thought it was a great place to live and wanted to get back here,” he said.

He and his wife came from Seattle in 2019, and Milam signed a franchise agreement with Camp Bow Wow in September 2020. Navigating through COVID-19 and other details of construction buildout and opening a business took two years.

Milam, who lives in Ridge Crossings Estates off Ross Bridge Parkway, said he chose to put his business in Bluff Park because there are a lot of new families with children moving into the community, and young families often have dogs.

He chose to operate a dog day care, boarding and grooming business because he loves dogs and knows that people these days are looking for quality care for their dogs when they need to leave them, he said.

“People are passionate about their pets. They treat their pets like their children,” he said.

The Camp Bow Wow business model is very “pro-dog” in the sense that the dogs aren’t just left alone and fed, Milam said. Dogs that stay there generally spend most of their time playing with other dogs and workers, unless the owner specifies that their pet doesn’t get along well with other dogs, he said.

The Camp Bow Wow in Bluff Park has 6,100 square feet of indoor space and 1,300 square feet of outdoor space, he said.

There are 47 “cabins” that are either 4x4 or 4x6 feet, one family cabin that is 8x6 for owners bringing more than one dog and two larger suites that include a TV for the dog, Milam said. Unless the owner specifies a channel, he usually leaves “Seinfeld” reruns on for the dogs to watch, he said.

“I love to watch ‘Seinfeld,’” he said. “Hopefully the dogs do, too.”

But unless the dogs are eating, taking a brief rest or going in for the night to sleep, they spend most of the time playing with other dogs, he said.

There are three indoor play areas and three outdoor play areas, each with cameras that allow owners to check in on their dogs whenever they want, Milam said.

“You can always see what your dog is doing. We’re not hiding anything. We think that’s important,” he said. “We’re in the business of providing peace of mind. That means transparency.”

Camp Bow Wow accepts all breeds, but all dogs go through a three-hour “interview” during which staff determine if the dog has the right temperament to be there and handles the “cabin” environment well, he said.

So far, business is going well, with about 300 dogs interviewed in the first two months and Camp Bow Wow typically seeing about 35 dogs a day, Milam said. Thus far, about 75% of the dogs have come just for day care, with 25% staying overnight, but he expects that to shift a little more toward overnight stays as time goes on, he said.

The good thing is that they’re seeing a lot of repeat customers, he said. “That means we’re doing our job.”