The dogs on the bus

By Janelle Fisher
City Pages Editor

If you had asked Hope Mehlberg ten years ago where she thought she would be today, she never would have guessed she’d be the owner of K9 Konvoy, an Oconto-based dog-walking/doggy daycare service with a large social media following.

“I have zero background in dogs, actually,” Mehlberg said. “I really wasn’t an animal person. Growing up, we had a dog… But I just never really had an interest.”

That all changed, though, when she began looking for an activity to take up after work.

“I worked a full-time job and I went through a lot of things personally,” she said. “I was coming home from work — I was working 4 a.m.-noon shifts — and I was doing less in the afternoon. So I just started walking my own two dogs. Then I started picking up my in-laws’ dog, and then I started with my parents’ dogs. And then Zeppelin, a big German shepherd. He’s the first dog and the reason this whole thing started.”

Zeppelin was the dog that tipped Mehlberg’s hobby towards a career, although their story got off to a harrowing start.

“It was a sad story where he ended up getting hit by a vehicle in front of my house,” she said. “I saw it happen and I saw him run away, so I spent 15-20 minutes trying to find this dog. Long story short, we took him to the vet and they didn’t know if he was going to make it. He ended up having collapsed lungs and he had a lot of issues… I connected with his mom when we were on our way down to the emergency vet and said, ‘If he pulls through this, he can join my walk.’ At the time, I only had seven dogs. It took about two or three months for him to heal and she reached out.”

With Zeppelin officially joining the walk, Mehlberg said she knew it was time for her business to expand.

“I was in my own personal vehicle, so I didn’t have much room at the time,” she said. “When Zeppelin came aboard, I started looking for utility vans. I bought my first utility van and it was nothing special. It was just to haul dogs around… I used that for about a year and I [walked dogs] part-time while still working my full-time job. I was pulling long days and long hours. In May of 2023, I quit my full-time job, bought the bus and that’s where we are now.”

The difference for Mehlberg since committing to K9 Konvoy full-time has been drastic.

“With my previous job, I was in management so I managed a lot of people and customers and all that kind of stuff,” she said. “I was just sick of dealing with the ins and outs of that. The biggest thing for me is that I get to work by myself and I get to spend all day with these dogs and I get to send them home back to their families just tired right out… I’m living my life and enjoying work every day. I love waking up. I love going to work. I love picking up the dogs.”

Once the day’s dogs have boarded the bus, usually a group of 22-26 dogs, Mehlberg takes them to her own private three-acre dog park where they have the opportunity to explore and play for a couple of hours — a much different experience than one might find at other doggy daycares.

“It’s not like your typical doggy daycare where they just kind of lay around or sometimes they go in a kennel for a bit,” she said. “We’re out here for two hours and it’s a full two hours of exercise. When they go home, they are exhausted. Having two dogs of my own, I know how much energy puppies have, so it is very rewarding for me to give my pet parents a little break and let the dogs calm down a little bit.”

Mehlberg said she’s even seen dogs who didn’t thrive in a traditional daycare setting flourish in her walking groups.

“I do a screening process prior to entering any dogs into my pack,” she said. “Dogs are organized by size, temperament and how they play… I have a couple of dogs that were kicked out of doggy daycares for how they play and I have a couple of reactive dogs that couldn’t be near other dogs when they started with me… So I have worked with a couple of those dogs and it is a night-and-day difference. The pack kind of trains itself. Dogs are pack animals, so they kind of just see and learn from each other.”

Not only do the dogs learn from each other, but they form bonds with each other as well.

“They’re just like kids, in my opinion,” Mehlberg said. “They each have like a best friend and they figure out who they play well with and who they don’t. And it kind of created a little community in our little community. A lot of the pet parents become friends because their dogs are friends or they get together on the weekends because their dogs play really well together.”

While building a community within her own community, Mehlberg has also built up a rather large community of followers on social media with more than 700,000 followers on TikTok liking and commenting on her videos of the dogs eagerly boarding the bus each day and playing together in the wooded park.

“I was on TikTok prior to starting my business and I saw a couple other dog businesses with buses and stuff,” Mehlberg said. “I’d seen those videos and then it kind of came to me and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to give it a shot and if it works, it works and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’ I just kept posting everyday… We just keep getting more and more followers and more and more love for the dogs.”

That love for the dogs is coming in the form of more than just online interactions, though, as people from around the world have begun sending treats for the pack to enjoy.

“We’ve received so much love and so many treats and packages that I’m kind of running out of space in my house right now to store them all,” she said. “Just about every day, I’m picking up five to eight more packages that are coming in. It’s insane… I started this pretty much just to get out of the house and get some exercise and it just kind of snowballed from there… We recently did a fundraiser for our local shelter because our dogs get so much love that we’re starting to give back to dogs in need.”

With more than 60 dogs currently enrolled with K9 Konvoy, Mehlberg is not accepting any new dogs at this time, but those interested in seeing what the pack is up to can follow along on the K9 Konvoy Facebook page or @k9konvoy on TikTok.