Business
27 August, 2025
Pet motel a haven for Mount Isa's furry friends
The boarding facility continues to grow in stature.
Owen Kruger provides a “home away from home” for the pets of Mount Isa.
The owner-manager of Furry Friends on Ryan Road says his pet motel is often the last stop for families departing the North West for a holiday or other appointments.
They will carry their dog or cat through the gates of the facility, which provides round the clock care for travelling families and individuals.
He says he did not set out to operate a pet motel.
Owen took a sharp career turn upon arriving in the region almost a decade ago, which now sees him rising early each morning to a welcoming chorus of dogs and cats across the multi-acre property.
“You would think it would be noisy here all day with all of the animals, but they just get used to you and so they’ll sleep all day,” he told North West Weekly.
“Once the dogs or cats have been here a while, they will just stay asleep while I am working around them.”
Originally trained as a chemical engineer in Perth, Owen was looking for a career change and arrived in Mount Isa with the intention of breeding and harvesting crickets for human consumption.
However, he took on a small family-owned kennel business soon after arriving in the city and his attention quickly switched to managing the expanding number of animals that could be catered for at Furry Friends.
These days, he can house a menagerie of feathers, fur and fins.
The 50-dog kennel and the 28 spaces in the cattery remain the bread and butter of the business.
But the space is also able to provide accommodation for snakes, fish, turtles, rats, guinea pigs, lizards and even chickens.
“We aren’t fenced in for a horse, but we have been asked,” he said.
“When we do get a different type of animal, we have to develop a new sheet of care instructions, and our staff seem to enjoy learning that.”
Owen said the business has found a regular clientele with owners who had arrived in Mount Isa with a pet but no family members that could care for the animal while they were out of town.
He said his biggest regular customer is a family that brings in their six cats and four dogs.
He said Furry Friends found its busiest times of year to be school holidays, as well as Easter and Christmas.
“When people are travelling outside of Mount Isa, they want to make it worth their while because plane tickets are so expensive,” he explained.
“So families will generally be away for a couple of weeks and that is a lot to burden a friend with; coming around to feed the animal, so they bring their pet to us.
“But we also get a lot of families who are travelling out of town for a weekend for kids sport or for medical reasons – or even if they are getting their bathroom or kitchen renovated.”
Owen said managing the concerns of caring pet owners had also become a central part of the role.
“We try to be sensitive to people because it can be quite emotional to have to leave your animal here for a week or two – especially for the first time” he said.
“If they don’t have kids, their pets do kind of slot into that role in their lives.
“Some people will email us or call and want to know how their animal is going – and I encourage them to.
“I have implemented this new idea where we send the owners a photo of their pet once a week, so they know they are going OK.
“That’s our clientele – if they didn’t care about their animal, they would just leave it at home with an opened bag of food piled on the ground.
“But it’s the people that really care about the welfare of their pets that bring them to us.”