Ms Thurley said the majority of calls in the first two weeks of the announcement were people cancelling their bookings for boarding of their animals.

Prior to this, the "doggy daycare" side of their business attributed to around five per cent of their business.

They placed a focus on that - opening up boarding areas to hold pampered pooches for playtime and marketing towards that.

"It was pretty scary, because at the end of the day I still had a mortgage, fixed overheads and staff members, I didn't have any luxuries ... so I took a brave pill, and rather than putting the business into hibernation we invested a lot of money into the business," Ms Thurley said.

"We were really lucky, we got given several grants from the state at the time so that really helped, but we put it straight into the business and we pivoted.

"We're classed as essential services so we were allowed to be out on the road, so we introduced what we call the Bark Bus."

The bus travelled out around Launceston's suburbs, both marketing the business and picking up people's pets from home.

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"Within a month of us having no business at all we were back full again - through doggy daycare, and it was fantastic," Ms Thurley said.

Another COVID-inspired idea was creating videos for online of their program participants - keeping people up to date on what their dogs were up to on their days out.

"We had a lot of people that had been caught overseas and we had a couple of their dogs stuck here and we put signs around their necks about how many days their mum or dad had left in quarantine," Ms Thurley said.

"We just wanted to make people laugh, make them smile, because people were locked up in quarantine and they weren't getting out."

It's service like this that won Pets Now Boarding two categories at the 2021 Tasplan Business Excellence Awards, taking out Marketing Excellence and Professional Services Excellence.

With the theme of resilience - it's clearly demonstrated how they took the challenges of the year in their stride.

They were awards the business wasn't expecting to take out - but were humbled by the recognition.

It's now full steam ahead for 2021 - with big plans to continue to improve their offering.

A purpose-built "luxury" cattery is set to open next month, with plans in the works to build more boarding kennels for dogs at the site.

Adding to their success in Launceston, the business is in the final stages of planning an extension of the business, adding another site into Hobart.

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