Eleanor Young has a first class law degree but turned her back on her legal career to pursue a dream of working with dogs.

She worked in wills and probate and then the civil service after graduating but, after being made redundant, decided to take the opportunity to start her own business.

The Pooch Pad, in Eccleshall, offers members only doggy day care and luxury boarding with home comforts including a flat screen TV, air conditioning, sofas and a ball pool.

Eleanor, now aged 28, has purposefully positioned The Pooch Pad at the luxury end of the market. She specifically caters for small dogs and has a waiting list of pet owners who are queueing up to become a member.

She said: “Entrepreneurship is often associated with disruption, innovation and taking calculated risks. My entrepreneurial journey began with one of the biggest risks of my life, leaving the security of a legal career at 26 years old to build a business from scratch in an industry I believed could offer more.

“I created The Pooch Pad after identifying an opportunity within the pet care market that I felt had been overlooked. While pet ownership had evolved significantly and owners increasingly viewed their dogs as family members, many day care environments had remained largely functional and volume driven. I believed there was space for something different.

“My vision was to create a premium, boutique experience dedicated specifically to small dogs, one that prioritised quality, trust and customer experience over scale.

“Launching the business required calculated risk taking. I moved away from a traditional professional career path to pursue a completely different industry, investing not only financially but personally into building something that reflected my own values and standards.

“The early stages required learning new disciplines quickly: operations, licensing, customer acquisition, marketing, finance, service design and brand building, whilst continuing to deliver day-to-day services personally.

“Rather than replicating existing models, I designed The Pooch Pad around a membership structure. This decision became one of the most important innovations within the business.

“The membership approach allowed attendance to remain intentionally controlled, creating carefully matched groups of dogs, stronger customer relationships and a more consistent experience. Instead of focusing on volume, the business was designed to maintain exclusivity and quality.

“This model challenged expectations of what dog day care could be. The result has been sustained demand, high levels of customer loyalty and waiting lists for memberships.

“What makes this growth particularly meaningful is that it has been achieved independently and intentionally. Every decision has been made with long-term sustainability in mind rather than rapid expansion.”

Eleanor Young has entered the Young Business Person of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Year categories of University of Staffordshire Business Awards and has entered The Pooch Pad into the Start-up Business of the Year, Growth and Small Business of the Year categories.