It started as Proline Underground Fencing
Keith and Rob McDonald started a pet containment company in Birmingham called Proline Underground Fencing, selling a product that no longer exists. The business was reincorporated as McDonald Brothers, Inc. around 2010, and that is still the legal name on our paperwork.
Later that same year we signed on as the central Alabama dealer for Dog Guard Out of Sight Fencing, manufactured by Sunward Electronics. That is where we learned the trade.
The number one Dog Guard dealership in the country
We were the top-selling Dog Guard dealership in the United States for six of seven years. Not the top in Alabama. The top anywhere.
Those years produced a wall of plaques that is still hanging in the office. Two of them are below.
We walked away, and 1,200 families were the problem
By 2001 the equipment was failing more than we could defend and the technology had stopped keeping pace. You cannot sell something you no longer trust in somebody's yard, so we decided to leave.
That decision came with a bill. We had roughly 1,200 Alabama families running Dog Guard systems we had installed ourselves. Walking away from the brand meant walking away from the ability to service them, and that was not something we were willing to do.
So before we gave notice, we went looking for a way to keep servicing them.
The question that built our service business
Months earlier a company called Perimeter Technologies had reached out and sent us a sample receiver, which had been sitting untested on a shelf. When we finally put it on a dog it performed better than what we were selling.
Then we found out who ran it. Perimeter's president was John Purtell, the man who founded Invisible Fence in 1976 and, with it, the entire pet containment industry.
We asked Perimeter whether they could build a receiver compatible with the Dog Guard systems already in our customers' yards, so those 1,200 families would not be stranded. Six weeks later a working sample arrived.
In 2002 we became an authorized Pet Stop dealer, and we have been one ever since.
Converting other companies' systems
What we built to protect our own customers turned into a specialty. In 2007 Pet Stop recognized us nationally for outstanding development of competitive system conversions, meaning we had become the dealer other people's customers came to when their original installer would not help them.
We still take those calls. Wire breaks, collar problems, and training questions on systems from brands we do not sell are ordinary work here.
Same town, same phone number
We have run this out of the Birmingham area the entire time, and the number on the vans in 2008 is the number that rings today: (205) 982-5196.
Keith stepped back from daily operations in late 2022 and left the business in 2023 to pursue other work. Rob has run it since.
Still at the top of the network
Pet Stop's Top Dog Club recognizes elite sales performance across the national dealer network. Our first was 2006. The most recent is 2024, and there are a good many in between, along with a national award in 2008 for the largest territory growth in the country.
