Fetching Fido Ltd

When Erv Unger was a kid growing up in Saskatoon, his father would take him and his brother along as he went door-to-door sharpening knives from the back of his custom fitted truck. He didn’t know it then but Erv would take some of those lessons he learned as a child and turn it into a successful mobile dog grooming business in Calgary called Fetching Fido Mobile Dog Salon. “Growing up, I wanted to stay home and watch cartoons,” says Erv. “Now, looking back, I learned so much from my dad by doing that. He was the true entrepreneur. That’s where the mobile concept started.”

Before starting Fetching Fido Mobile Dog Salon, Erv worked as a marketing manager for a major food company. His wife, Kim, spent years with a specialty coffee company until she was diagnosed with a brain tumor that required surgery. The surgery was successful but just a month after returning to work, she was laid off.  “It was stressful time,” says Erv. “That was the point where it sort of kicked in and we said ‘now is the time. Let’s do something for ourselves.’ We always had dogs in our lives. We took the mobile idea, the dog idea and put them together.”