By: Steven Appelbaum
ABC President & CEO
Hello and welcome to another edition of Paw Prints. It’s hard to believe 2025 is heading into fall. I know it’s cliché, but it does seem like every year goes faster than the one before. Maybe that’s just me getting older, or perhaps it seems that way because every year seems busier than the last. It certainly has been busy this year at ABC.
Our online enrollment application and agreements make it easier for prospective students to enroll at our school. We have migrated all our marketing campaigns to a more modern CRM and will soon have the rest of the school on our new system. Starting in September, we will begin the process of changing our Learning Management System (LMS). We believe a new LMS will allow for a better student experience and make it easier to make additions and improvements to our programs. We’ve been working on all of the above items since mid-December 2024, and it’s nice to see we are getting close to the finish line on them.
Every year, we create an action plan. This document outlines each department’s yearly goals and the action(s) required to meet them. While the plan can look daunting (some previous action plans were 150 pages long), they help keep each department focused on the year ahead by clearly stating expectations, due dates, and who is responsible for what. What action plans can’t do is predict unexpected events or what happens if goals take longer to execute than expected. This year was no exception. Initially, we anticipated that all of our systems upgrades and changes (LMS, CRM, online application, and contracts, etc.) would be completed by mid-August. Since those predictions proved to be overly optimistic, we’ve had to push other items we’d hoped to launch or start this year into next.
One of those items is a new short-term program we call the Pet Parent Canine Survival Guide. This short-term program is the first we are creating that focuses on pet parents rather than pet professionals. We are excited about it as it will give dog parents the knowledge we’ve gained in over 30 years in the pet business. Tips on everything from puppy raising to training, health, adoption, senior dog care, and much more will be available to anyone interested in learning more about their dog or who plans on obtaining one. This program was originally slated to launch in late Q3 2025, but realistically, it won’t be available until probably March or April of 2026. We are also planning a similar program for cat parents next year.
Short-term programs have been on my radar for some time. Not only do I think they’re essential for pet professionals interested in learning or honing more advanced skills, but they are also great for people interested in learning more about the pet industry before committing themselves entirely to it. One of the challenges we’ve had is that the enrollment process for short-term programs was less developed, which is a nice way of saying more complex and convoluted than it should be for anyone except new students enrolling in one of our main programs. This was understandable as 90% of short-term program enrollments come from students who add short-term programs to their enrollment when they sign up for a main course. The challenge was for students, graduates, or mentors wishing to take a stand-alone short-term program. It was impossible, but much harder to enroll. I am happy to say that we’ve addressed that issue. Now, anyone wishing to enroll in an ABC short-term program can do so using our simple online enrollment process. This not only makes our current short-term programs more accessible but will make it much easier for pet parents to enroll in one, once the pet parent programs are created and available.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to connecting with all of you again!
