Affinity for animals
Dog days of summer - Joldine and Coco Lee outside Bowen’s Little Pet Store with husband Michael Epp in background.
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Updated: August 07, 2009 8:40 AM
There might be something just a little unusual about Joldine Lee growing up and having a cat – or the facts that she has a dog, Coco Lee, runs a pet shop and is organizing Bowen’s 16th Annual Dog Show this weekend.
Just a little.
“I’m actually allergic to cats and dogs,” she confessed during a talk at her Bowen’s Little Pet Shop at Artisan Square last week. “But when I was growing up I had this salamander named Sally and a cat named Boo and I would always be the one who’d go around the neighbourhood and look after people’s cats and dogs.
“I was a cat nerd but I did get my shots and I’m okay.”
The loquacious Lee and husband Michael Epp moved over from Vancouver 13 years ago when son Paul was one years old and have since added the now 10-year-old Venice. An architect, Lee was laid-off last December and by New Year’s Eve, had a pet store.
“I love that about my wife,” Epp, who sat outside the pet store studying lines for a local play, said. “I mean she didn’t just sit around and mope about it. Within two weeks she had this idea of a pet shop. We moved in on New Year’s Eve; at the stroke of midnight, I got the last bag off the truck.”
They opened the next day in a few feet of snow.
It has been a family project and when moved in they then became part of another family, the family of store owners up at Artisan, a group they speak highly of.
On that first day, Carlos and Joanne Vela-Martinez from neighbouring Cocoa West Chocolatiers brought over warm drinks and chocolates shaped like animals and became their very first customers. They bought cat toys.
Mom reports that Venice is great with customers and at answering the phone, while Paul designed and built the website (bowenslittlepetshop.com) and wrote the slogan that currently hangs on the sign out front: Big enough to Serve you – Small enough to Care. He has another slogan upcoming that Lee won’t yet reveal.
Bowen’s Little Pet Shop’s most famous customer to date? Former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan showed up one day with a small entourage.
Now if being the boss of your own business and running a dog show takes, well, takes bossiness, then that is something Joldine manages nicely. However, the bossiness she possesses is more the amusing type.
“Oh don’t write that down,” she instructs at one point. “What are you doing? Hey now don’t write it down that I said not to write it down. And don’t write it down that I said that, either!
“All right that’s it: I’m not saying anything else.”
Happily she does say more and soon enough along comes a usable instruction: “Ask me some questions about Dog Days,” she orders. Done.
It is the 16th Dog Days of Summer and it’s happening on Aug. 9 at the Union Steamship Marina lawns, with registration at 11 a.m. and events beginning at noon. It’s her first time organizing. Previously it was handled rather brilliantly by Rondy and Dorothy Dike, who will be helping this time around.
Doc Morgan’s and the Bowen Island Dog Ranch are sponsors and the host is the Union Steamship Marina. Bill Thornton will MC and all the proceeds go to B.C. Guide Dog Services and Autism Support Dogs. Contests include best trick and the popular dog/owner lookalike contest. Admission is free and if you’d like to volunteer show up at 10 a.m.
Now there could be upwards of 400 people there, many with dogs, but it is likely that organizer Joldine Lee will have something that few others, if any, will have.
An allergy to each and every participant.
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