Ask Peter Hoare about his bottom line and he’ll tell you it isn’t so much money as the crazy look of joy on a dog’s face when it’s running free across an Essex field.
Not just any Essex field, but the 5,000 square feet of fenced, lush lawn he maintains himself at his 6 1/2-acre Dog Barn Daycamp on Southern Avenue.
Hoare — who Wednesday evening will be celebrated at Riversbend restaurant as Essex’s small business person of the year — has become an integral part of the town’s fabric since he arrived in 2012.
Not just as a business owner, but as a volunteer EMT/firefighter, member of the Board of Health, not to mention front man for his band, Essex Junction.
He is, as the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce put it in announcing his win, “the definition of all in, in Essex.”
Hoare, who says he’s “humbled” by the chamber’s recognition, describes himself as a guy who “keeps his head down and runs his own race.”
That race began in New York where he grew up “with multiple dogs” on coastal Long Island, decades later gravitating to the North Shore from Boston where, as an EMT in a private ambulance service, he “moved up through the ranks to help grow the company, Eascare, from 30 employees and six ambulances to 600 employees and a fleet of 100 ambulances.”
But his first love, says Hoare, was always dogs, and his first venture into dog care was cofounding Sweet Paws rescue foster, a nonprofit now located in Boxford, run by his former partner, Cynthia Sweet.
Buying property in Essex was a huge step for him, but Hoare says he found the perfect location in those 6 1/2 acres of South Lane Farm, 128 Southern Ave. Although the property came with a beautifully preserved 1737 farm house where he now lives with fiancée Memory Layne, it did not originally come with the big red barn for which the business is named.
That Hoare designed himself, hiring his local “volunteer firefighter/EMT buddies” to do the construction. Today, its purpose-built, open-air and comfortably equipped kennels host 60-plus dogs at any given time. Some are day boarders, some stay overnight, and many are regular daily guests whose “working ‘parents’ regard Dog Barn as a second home,” he said.
Hoare says he was one of those rare business owners whose business actually got a boost from the COVID-19 pandemic “because everybody and their brother went out and got dogs.”
He says he also benefitted from years of boarding his own dogs in daycare kennels.
“I watched and noted what worked and didn’t, both for the dogs and their parents,” he said.
Not all dogs are meant for this kind of communal environment, says Hoare, so at Barn Dog, all potential “guests” are carefully screened and evaluated. “We take all breeds, including pits,” he says, evaluating each for individual temperament and personality traits.
Hoare now employs a fulltime staff of eight trained caregivers and shares the running of the business with Layne, a graphic artist who handles marketing and social media.
That includes regularly posted photos of the dogs frolicking in their yard, splashing in their dipping pools, and hilarious videos of dogs champing at the bit when they hear the words: “We’re going to Barn Dog.”
Staff Writer Joann MacKenzie may be contacted at 978-675-2707, or jomackenzie@gloucestertimes.com.