Whitie's Pets

Serving Pets & Their People Since 1943.

The Whiting family opened Whitie’s Pets in 1943 in a funny triangular building at Ventura and Hazelwood. It was a good location on a busy street through a tidy neighborhood, and they stayed there for 20 years before selling it to Don and Sue Shafer. The former barber shop owners and chicken ranchers could have just picked up where the Whitings left off, but Don and Sue had other plans. 1968 found Whitie’s Pets in a 7,000 foot building and a little ahead of the curve… at the time there weren’t enough products being manufactured for pets to fill that much space. The former Sprouse-Reitz store at Ventura and 5th was transformed with show tanks, wonderfully merchandised displays, and a central koi pond. The Shafer family did all the work; engineering, carpentry, everything. Adapting what the department store left behind and creating something that didn’t exist at the time, the “complete pet store”.