Local businesses gain traction

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This article was published 12/11/2024 (556 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A look at a map in Brandon will show how many small businesses and hobby projects the city has to offer.

The Sun visited two families over the weekend to get a picture of two entrepreneurial projects: a local dog breeder, and a couple hosting a getaway retreat.

Oak Haven Oasis

Twenty minutes south of Brandon, Willi and Taylor Penner have built up a group of cabins meant for couples’ getaways called Oak Haven Oasis.

It’s three dome-shaped cabins, each built self-sufficient for two adults with a full bathroom, a hot tub, electronic heating and humidity controls, a king-size bed, air conditioning, a fire table and a coffee machine.

The husband and wife have spent the last two years developing the getaway experience. Willi now maintains a group of trails around the cabins meant for peaceful walks, as well as a hunter-style cabin with a wood fireplace, an audio system and dining table.

“What kind of experience would we want? We just give that,” he told the Sun. “The challenge is making sure what you have is different.”

They put the domes on crawl spaces with ductwork for heating and air conditioning, installed toilets and showers and connected electricity out from their home. It was a lot of sweat getting started.

“The building process was a sacrifice,” said Willi. “The first summer we put the shovel in the ground, I was working every day until midnight.”

Today, things are built and the couple’s job is to keep it running smoothly. They’ve reached more than 10,000 followers on their Instagram account and are starting to see busy bookings.

“It was very, very slow growth,” said Taylor. “I’m not a marketer by any means, but I did my best.”

Taking responsibility for social media, Taylor said she did some studying online about advertising and marketing. They are trying some new ideas like a “romance package,” in which roses and wine are offered for the guests.

The guests typically come anywhere within a three-hour drive, she said.

The focus is on staying the course now. An ideal future, they said, is one in which bookings are at full capacity, but the feedback from guests stays the same, that they can grow with the same experience.

Gentrice Goldens

In another neck of the Brandon area, Catherine McGill has made a project from breeding golden retrievers.

The idea for her breeding hobby, now under the name Gentrice Goldens, came after her eight-year-old dog died. She said she learned her canine would have lived longer had he been bred properly.

“When Clifford died and he didn’t have the genetics behind him, I wanted to save other families from that heartache,” she told the Sun. “In my mind, I was trying to save other families.”

She set out to breed healthier animals so owners could have dogs with longer lives. Today, she has bred about 100 puppies, and they all came from parents that she tested for a healthy heart, healthy eyes, healthy hips and healthy elbows.

It means the puppies will have better genetics. It also means trips to see dog specialists in Winnipeg.

“What isn’t realized is all the background work that goes into it,” said McGill. She added there are endless opportunities to improve on raising puppies that can be time consuming. “It’s a game. And you can go down that rabbit hole and not come up for days.”

Some things she does at home include teaching puppies to be calm around sounds like vacuums, so that they go home well-adjusted. And, she teaches them that discomfort passes without the need to run and hide, by briefly poking the puppies between the toes with a Q-Tip.

It can become a serious venture when multiple litters come at the same time. McGill said she was doing this with 21 puppies at once in the past because her breeding females gave birth back-to-back.

“I work a 10-hour day and it’s all dogs,” she said. “When you’ve got puppies, you can’t go anywhere.”

McGill keeps them with their mother at least for eight weeks before allowing buyers to take them home. When things get too busy, her husband or daughters chip in to offload some of the work.

“There’s a lot of late nights,” said her husband, Rob McGill. “So we try to help Cat with more of the house work so she has more time to focus on the dogs.”

And, on the odd occasion, the family has had to make sacrifices. The husband and wife laugh as they recall the time Catherine skipped out on their trip to the Dominican Republic, so she could stay home and tend to the dogs.

Rob ended up taking one of their daughters instead.

“She’s very passionate. She loves animals and she wants to do it right.”

It has been about three years for Catherine breeding puppies. Once in a while she hears back from owners, who tell her about employing the dogs for sports like retrieving ducks.

“I’ve got puppies from coast to coast now,” she says.

The puppies each sell for $2,500. It may sound like a lucrative business, but Catherine says it’s break-even.

She said she invests as much as she gets back, and it pays for the health tests, “astronomical” costs for food, trips to Winnipeg, pregnancy exams and everything in between. Sometimes dogs just fail the health tests, but you still have to pay for it.

It’s an investment of time and money, but it doesn’t feel like work for the mother of three, whose refrigerator dons a magnet reading “100 per cent farm girl.” She said she has had jobs in real estate, hospitality, travel and fitness through her life, but never found the passion she now has for breeding field golden retrievers.

“I put everything into my dogs, they’re my heart and soul.”

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com