There’s a conspiracy against dog owners in the city of Aurora.
That’s how it felt to Susan Huber, at least, when she and her husband set out to look for places to shop, eat and just hang out. The couple constantly had their two Golden Retrievers in tow, and the prospect of leaving them in the car always felt cruel. Making the pooches wait while they went shopping didn’t feel fair either.
“Our dogs go with us almost everywhere we go. There’s no place in Aurora where we can bring them,” Susan insists.
Four years ago, that pet peeve made Susan take action. A manager at Helga’s German Restaurant and Deli in Aurora, she made a stand to the shop’s board of directors. Helga’s should be a place where dog owners can bring their pooches and expect service, she said. Sure, state laws may prohibit dogs from being in the building, but that didn’t mean the restaurant couldn’t offer some canine accommodations on its sizable patio.
“We always make sure there’s fresh water. We have doggie dishes. We have a fire hydrant for accidents. We also have accident bags,” she said. “They’re always welcome.”
Those efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. The restaurant on East Exposition Avenue earned the top spot of Aurora’s dog-friendly restaurants on bringfido.com, a website devoted to pet owners looking for businesses that welcome their pooches.
Judging by the other businesses on the list, Helga’s is making big strides where other independent restaurants aren’t even putting a blip on the radar screen. The rest of the winners are chain restaurants, fastfood joints like Sonic and Chipotle where an open patio is a built-in architectural feature. Those eateries won their ranks almost accidentally.
By contrast, the list of pooch-friendly restaurants in Denver is made up entirely of independent joints, breweries and coffee shops that feature dog treats, water dishes and other accommodations on their patios.
Helga’s may be at the head of a new business trend in Aurora, one that taps into a community that’s long been underserved.
“We even get reservations from people because they know that we have our pet-friendly patio,” she notes, adding that dogs aren’t the only animals who’ve come to enjoy Helga’s policy. “I do have a customer who has a parrot. He brings him in a little basket. He loves our jagerschnitzel.”
Health code rules bar most animals from being inside a restaurant (service dogs are an exception). Still, the movement to include pets in a business plan is gaining more and more traction. Sites like bringfido.com offer an international list of pet-friendly eateries, shops and parks. More and more, having a big patio at a restaurant means including a welcome mat for pets.
“I think people love the idea that they get to take their dog outside of the house and come and enjoy a brew,” said Josiah Miller, a general manager at the Lowry Beer Garden. “We gave them their own little area.”
The bar and restaurant has an open-air structure, and dogs aren’t allowed inside the gates of the patio that includes picnic tables and party games during the summer. That doesn’t mean the business has ignored the demands of their customers’ pets in this pedestrian-friendly neighborhood.
There’s a long strip of grass just outside the gates that’s reserved for dogs. Owners can tie up their pooches on leashes, grab some doggie treats and keep Fido in eyesight when they’re on the patio.
That’s good progress for customers like Huber, a loving dog owner who calls her pooches her “babies” and takes them with her to get a bite to eat, take a walk and run errands. Even so, businesses in Aurora have a long way to go for owners forced to leave their pets at home.
“If we don’t like that, I know there are other people who don’t like it either,” Susan says.