business
Surviving the Storm Gail Radtke details her experiences with adapting to the conditions imposed by COVID-19 from the perspective of a dog trainer and small business owner
© Philip Chan
When the coronavirus pandemic first hit, author Gail Radtke (top left) closed her physical training facility and quickly moved her classes online, with great success
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ooking back to MarchApril time, it seems like the entire dog train ing business as we know it pretty much crashed overnight. As COVID19 started to take hold, decisions had to be made fast – es pecially for those of us who run a business at a physical location, that is under a lease, who realized we were not going to earn any income at that venue for the foreseeable future. Of course, we had all heard about the coronavirus and what was happening overseas but had no idea that the entire world was about to be affected in a way that our generation – or any before us – had never experienced. I have since learned that coronaviruses are a large family of viruses and that human coronaviruses are common and typically associated with mild illnesses, similar to the common cold (Government of Canada, 2020). However, as we all know, COVID19 has turned out to be so much
While virtual meetings have been common in the business world for some time, virtual training has now taken the dog training industry by storm.
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BARKS from the Guild/July 2020
more. I am in no way mathematically inclined, but the term “exponen tial growth” has been forever etched in my mind and I now fully under stand that a pandemic is quite different to an epidemic. Just to be clear, “[a]n epidemic is the rapid spreading of disease in a certain population or region; a pandemic is an epidemic that has spread worldwide.” (Asso ciated Press, 2020). As we all know by now, “[o]n March 11, the World Health Organization declared the COVID19 outbreak a pandemic.” (As sociated Press, 2020). In British Columbia, Canada, where I live and have my training facil ity, our provincial government imposed mandates as to what was con sidered an “Essential Service.” Other, “nonessential” businesses, facilities, schools, and many other public places were abruptly closed. We learned very quickly that, in an effort to slow or even contain the spread of COVID19, we would need to take measures to socially dis tance ourselves from all persons, again, as mandated by our local au thorities. This meant not having direct contact with anyone other than persons living in our immediate households. It was if the world had sud denly just stopped and everything was standing still. For me personally, not only did I take immediate action and close my physical training loca
