00:00So we opened the shop in December 2021 following an autism diagnosis for my son in the summer prior and we wanted to create an employment opportunity for him in an environment where he could be supported by the local community, people that knew him, so he felt as though he could be himself, he could learn at the speed that he needed to learn and generally just be comfortable with working in our shop.
00:26He struggled at the time with his education and so we thought this was the best thing for him to sort of have a future.
00:34As time's gone on obviously he's now got into school and he's developing his sort of skills in other areas so this is always an opportunity for him if he wants it but who knows he could end up being the next rock star.
00:46Absolutely yeah I mean the shop has been really really good for him so he comes every Saturday morning he comes and sets up for me so he comes and hoovers and mops, he puts the signs out, he washes the windows, so he does that every Saturday morning so that's been really good helping him get into that work ethic very much so.
01:03We've got under the counter we've got space for both our dogs to be and when I used to sort of pick him up from school he used to finish early I would take the dogs home and he would come back and sit under the counter so he could hear all the conversations, he could hear the repetition of how you greet somebody, how a conversation goes, that's really helped with how he communicates, it's helped with his independence because we've done events and he's just had to literally muck in and get involved because we are family owned, we're independent, we do
01:33we don't have any sort of rules or anything that we need to follow from head office, we're very flexible so we've adapted according to what our customer needs are so we did establish a number of years ago that we, because we've got experience with food intolerances, I've got one that's allergic to chicken, people start to hear those stories, start to ask the right questions so we've become a destination for people that have got dogs with food intolerances and then as that's gone on again I've got another one who has got arthritis
02:03so we've developed a lot of different non-medical treatments for him that has actually helped and it's worked and as time's gone we've got a reputation now for helping people that have dogs with different issues so we want to go down more the health and wellbeing route simply because we've seen such success with our own dog with his arthritis that it's just made us want to share that and it's been transformational for him so you know it's like why wouldn't you want to shout about it
02:32So that's helped us reach people like we've had a dog dietitian in, we've got a dog behaviourist coming in so they're all coming into store and providing sort of free advice for our customers, people that have problems with different things so hopefully that you know is making us into not just another pet shop there's actually a real reason for people to come here
