ALEXANDRIA, Va. (7News) — On the corner of Oronoco and North Asaph streets in Alexandria is a 50-year history of training over 20,000 dogs in the Virginia community.
Carlos and Sandy Mejias opened a family-owned and operated grooming and pet training store, The Olde Towne School for Dogs.
Carlos and Sandy Mejias opened Olde Towne School for Dogs in 1975. They’re celebrating the family owned and operated business 50th anniversary in November.
The business has become a “landmark facility for educating dogs and their owners in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area,” the school’s website notes.
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“I do remember coming down here in ’75; of course, none of this was here. And I would say to myself when I was driving to school, ‘But someday we’re going to train just about every dog in this town.’ This town was perfect for the dogs,” Carlos Mejias told 7News.
Carlos and Sandy Mejias opened Olde Towne School for Dogs in 1975. They’re celebrating the family owned and operated business 50th anniversary in November. (7News/Jade Lawson){ }
After spending some time in Upstate New York and learning from another dog trainer, Sandy said she was ready to venture out and start a business in Virginia.
“We were working for a gentleman named Captain Haggerty. He had one of the big dog training schools, and we decided we wanted to do our own thing,” Sandy Mejias said. “We decided we were going to do daycare, which nobody did back then. In ’75, there was no doggy daycare, and we were going to do dog doggy daycare training.”
Sandy Mejias recalls close friends and family laughing at her back then about starting that daycare, but now it has become a popular service for dogs and dog owners.
“Everyone wants to have a relationship with their dog. I think when we opened the school and we started doing the daycare training and teaching people how to have a relationship and do things with their dog, they found out how cool it was. Now it’s the in thing to do stuff with your dog,” Sandy Mejias said.
After the couple retired in 2022, a new generation of owners stepped in.
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“We had big shoes to fill,” Brad Huber told 7News.
Huber and Yubissan Bilbao have been working at Olde Towne since the mid-2000s, rising through the ranks to become managers and now co-owners of the business.
“We focus here on basic pet obedience, so we handle all the nuisance issues, jumping, pulling, barking, to more extravagant issues, or maybe that’s not the right word, but complex issues, resource guarding, people aggression, dog aggression, severe anxiety,” Huber said.
The team said they have trained a little over 1,000 dogs each.
Now with a dog park, groomer and training on what seems to be on every street corner, the new co-owners said having the longevity has helped with customer loyalty.
“It helps, thanks to Sandy and Carlos to be an institution in the community. We have a bit of brand recognition, thankfully, and we try to live up to that each and every day. The quality of our staff, I think we set ourselves apart from everyone else out there.”
The team will be hosting an official celebration on Nov. 8 at the store for customers and guests. The event will feature vendors, an adoption from Operation Paws and all proceeds will be donated to the non-profit organization.