Our Beginnings
Every story has a beginning and here we tell you a little about ours. Everything was taking shape little by little.
Welcome to the Bright Puppy's blog.
“We have hundreds of stories throughout the Dominican Republic, the United States and other countries that remind us that hard and dedicated work does pay off. We have built a healthy and abundant community of pet owners.”
Hi, I'm Luis, born and raised in the beautiful city of Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. Since I was little I have had pets, from dogs to turtles. I remember once having a cat trained by me, a 7-year-old boy whose strongest training ability was for him to go up to my hand for food when he picked it up. The painted chicken that he had did the same, the dog, the pigeon, the turtles and naturally the fish rose to the surface. I have always been around animals and that has helped me in ways that I personally may not even be aware of.
I lived in Santo Domingo, the capital of R.D. and I currently live in the United States. I am the founder of Cachorros RD, a company that since its inception in 2012 had a focus on humans and their development, then on pets. Then I will explain the reason for this statement that can be misinterpreted, however it is in our organization, the heart that pumps our motives.
It all started in Santo Domingo, in a friend's Pet Shop when on my work break I was photographing the pets he had there. On Facebook, a friend of Santiago who saw her photos asked me if I helped her get a Great Dane, one of the largest dogs in existence. I immediately spoke with the owner of the Pet Shop and near the store there was a man who had 2 4-month-old puppies, yes, at that age they were already over my knee, they were huge. I took the photos, sent them to him and told him that I went to Santiago every weekend, I could take the puppy to him on Saturday. He asked me the price and when I found out I told him "he's not a cheap dog" and gave him the price. His immediate response was: "I'll wait for you on Saturday." I arranged everything so that everyone receives their portion of the payment and take this dog to Santiago.
The road was quite intense, as you can understand a dog of that size is going to do mischief in the vehicle, but the road was short and more enjoyable with him accompanying me. I think we even sang a Silvio Rodríguez song together on the way. I arrived smelling like a dog smiling stupidly. We dismounted and I promptly forgot about the shit I had to pick up on the way. What I will never forget was my friend's facial expression as she saw her pet running towards her. She had never delivered something that produced so much happiness in a person. I had been a hardware equipment salesman, I had a business selling things for the home, I used to sell fruits from my patio in the neighborhood when I was 5 years old. But I've never seen someone's face change as much as it is the day I gave up that puppy. He marked me and made me so happy that I said to myself: "I want to spread happiness for the rest of my life." From then on that became the motto that would represent what today is the core of my efforts.
The road has been a piece of cake... or rather, without using sarcasm, it has been somewhat strong because as you already know, in our country there are no regulations to achieve this type of work in an organized manner. I made many efforts to organize ourselves as breeders, many meetings in different parts of the country to understand how those who were already in this world think and see how we could unite to achieve more for the pets and for us as an association. I didn't know how difficult it was to gather so many people and get them to join a cause. I struggled for several years until in the end I listened to the advice of a friend who has a lot of experience in the sector, whom I also respect and appreciate very much, with whom I had had several meetings. I share it for all those who are starting a business and have their dreams at the top, he told me: "Try to focus on yourself first and on your business. Sometimes the human being does not understand when someone wants to achieve something and the only reaction is to attack and destroy. Keep working on yourself." I confess that right now writing that sentence, bitter memories come to mind of how bad it felt to want to achieve things together and receive so many problems back, for free. That is why I made that council a lifestyle and from then on we founded the values that today would be the foundations of Cachorros RD.
To this can be added that by 2012 there were basically no known online pet stores. The whole structure and development of the ideas and how we were going to do everything was taking shape from scratch over the years. We started taking puppies all over the country and then outside the country when Uber didn't even exist in the Dom. Rep. I personally went out to take puppies to the 4 corners of the country.
The demand for pets was increasing every day in a way that we could hardly cover, everything was reinvested in improving our structure to be able to offer more and more quality. We supplied ourselves with breeders from all over the country and we made many mistakes, some of which made us rethink ourselves as a company. Many of the breeders we worked with did not have any standards of responsible breeding and care, we found ourselves guaranteeing puppies that they did not guarantee us. Many of us had to cover veterinary care, which exceeded any benefit we had in just 1 day of hospitalization. We've been attacked on social media on many occasions for cases that were false and reposted at full speed by people who wouldn't even investigate the other side of the story. The social lynching that was done to us was such that many of those who worked with us cried in the middle of the office because they knew they were giving everything. What had cost us so much was being destroyed by the noise of social networks that instead of giving us up, ended up being an alert to improve.
From that moment we created our health and purity guarantee contract, where we detail the care that a puppy needs. We realized that most people did not read the contract, so we made some digital broshures to send them at the time of delivery, in addition to repeating these basic care in person, by WhatsApp and by call. We purged the list of breeders and kept those who complied with responsible breeding standards and gave a health guarantee. The problem that kept happening was not our clear specification of things, although we were still delivering at an ideal age for the puppies. We concluded that our country was in exciting change, but still needs education about it. The acquisition of puppies is sometimes done on a whim, they are not given the intense care that a dog requires until they are at least 5 months old. Some people left the puppy without feeding for more than 12 hours, mixed them with other animals in the house and many took them to the beach and rivers without having their initial vaccination schedule complete. To complete the picture, when they got sick they called us after 2 weeks saying that they had never left their apartment. Luckily, there are social networks that help us understand this behavior. The country needs education for pet owners. We needed another strategy.
The success we had giving daily follow-up for the first weeks after the pets were delivered was amazing. The cases of illnesses dropped almost to zero and if any happened, we immediately took care of it with our breeders who were being responsible. We educate each pet owner to start a new life with the puppy by teaching them that it is not enough to always have had puppies at home, it is about giving them genuine love. From then on, our commitment became more solid and we never stopped offering a better quality of life to each person who approached us. It became our greatest strength, to the point that we have hundreds of stories throughout the Dominican Republic, the United States and other countries that remind us that hard and dedicated work does pay off. We have built a healthy and abundant community of pet owners.
We continue to innovate today because we know there is always room for improvement. I am glad to have a work team that sees the well-being of pets and human relations as something more important than any other achievement, it fills me with satisfaction to know that we have grown as people. I want to thank with my heart in my hand those who always trusted us in the most difficult times we face, those who supported us and all the staff who have passed through our company giving a lot of themselves. It has been a wonderful journey and with emotion I tell you that this is now beginning.