Pets bring us together, make communities feel safe and even relieve stress and anxiety. In fact, 40% of pet owners have made friends through their pet.
Yet many places around the country still aren’t accessible to people out and about with their pets. We hope to help change that.
As part of the Mars Petcare US BETTER CITIES FOR PETS™ program, today we met with business owners in our hometown city of Franklin, TN, for an important step toward more pet-friendly businesses.
Retailers from Downtown Franklin joined the preview meeting for a Pets Welcome pilot program, which will launch this summer.
The goal is to make it easy for businesses to be more pet-friendly. Mars Petcare and Nashville Civic Design Center will provide retailers with best practice research, a code of conduct for participating pets, free signage, in-store education materials, and more.
Participants will track their experiences as they welcome more pets, and take part in research to fine-tune the program for future implementations.
The Downtown Franklin Pets Welcome program will kick off with a launch event  in June. The pilot period will run through the summer and fall. Learnings and next steps will determined by the end of 2017.