Step into A Dog's Dream Natural Pet Supply in White Center and you are immediately greeted by a wall sized photo display capturing hundreds beloved pets. Over her 20 years in business across locations in Georgetown, White Center, and Des Moines, owner Lori Anderson estimates she has personally met over 10,000 dogs.

The store is located at 9620 14th Ave. SW.

Her photo collection does not stop at canine companions; it also features 30 to 40 cats, rabbits, snakes, birds, a hairless rat, and even a chicken.

For Lori, these photos represent the heart of her neighborhood stores, where building genuine personal relationships with pet owners matters far more than competing with online retail giants.

Lori's path to pet retail combined a deep love of animals, a strong connection to pet rescue and adoption, and an unexpected career shift from biomedical research.

After earning a biology degree at Agnes Scott, she worked in research labs at Emory University, spent three years in the structural genomics lab at the University of Washington, and managed a laboratory studying pregnancy malaria vaccines at Seattle Biomedical.

While working at Emory, she took a part-time job at a local pet store after getting her first dog, quickly falling in love with pet retail. Later, while managing a Tanzania research lab and facing grueling 40 to 80 hour workweeks, Lori realized she wanted a career where she could raise her child without missing out on family life.

Drawing on her scientific background, her business mind for numbers, and her experience navigating her own dog's severe food allergies, she opened her first pet supply store in Georgetown.

Lori's pet care philosophy is firmly rooted in science, education, and uncompromising standards. Her core guiding rule is simple: if she would not feed a product to her own pets, she will not carry it in her store. Because she understands the biological needs of animals, Lori is extremely selective about what reaches her shelves.

All foods sold in her shops must be domestically made and sourced, with real protein as the first ingredient, and contain no wheat, soy, corn, byproducts, or ingredients from China.

For kibble, she mandates that manufacturers must be family-owned and produce their own food, a rigorous standard that limits her inventory to just three kibble brands in the United States.

Furthermore, Lori actively educates her staff and customers on the benefits of freeze-dried raw and raw food diets, noting that diets consisting solely of dry kibble can leave pets in a state of dehydration with unnecessary carbohydrates.

Beyond canine nutrition, A Dog's Dream offers a diverse selection of foods and supplies for virtually every animal. The stores carry specialized foods for dogs, cats, wild birds, chickens, fish, lizards, and cockatoos, as well as the largest small animal section in South Seattle.

A dedicated raw room provides freeze-dried and fresh raw options that pet parents cannot easily ship through online services. In addition to premium nutrition, the business stocks bowls, beds, collars, treats, toys, and travel gear, while offering self-wash dog stations where owners can bathe dirty pups and leave the mess behind.

Despite the long hours of working across her locations seven days a week, Lori finds immense satisfaction in her work. She views petting her customers' dogs every day as the ultimate stress reducer and the best part of her job. Sharing her home with a menagerie of sight hounds, a bird, chickens, and fish, alongside a shop cat at the Georgetown store, Lori brings both scientific expertise and genuine love to every pet that walks through her doors.

Her philosophy is simple and heartfelt.

"I come home and it makes the dog's day, right? And there's something to be said about that. And I feel like that's why we have pets"