SALEM, Ohio — For more than 15 years, Emily and Keith Ellsworth, owners of Pure Pet, have been providing the Salem area with new homes for unique animals as well as education for their owners.
Pure Pet offers a wide range of products, including locally made dog foods, reptile supplies, pet toys and educational materials. The store is home to reptiles, amphibians, birds, hamsters and mostly freshwater fish. If pet rocks are more your speed, Pure Pet has those too, carved soapstone lizards and other things.
While many of the animals and products at Pure Pet are far from ordinary, Emily said they’re not too extreme, either.
“We’re not just going for the most exotic,” she said. “We’re going for things that make a good pet, that make an interesting, intriguing pet.”
That includes a wide variety of fish, bearded dragons and several snakes.
Emily, who studied wildlife at Hocking Hills College, said education is even more important than making a sale. She wants customers, especially young ones, to be set up for success.
“We want kids that grow up in the [fish keeping] hobby to expand upon it, not just have something that they play with for a few days,” she said. “It’s a long-term hobby.”
And it’s a hobby that’s growing. Pure Pet now maintains about 3,000 gallons of fish.
Because animals and people alike thrive among plants, the store carries those, too. Emily said she hopes to add more outdoor aquatic plants, as well as a greenhouse and pollinator garden in the future.
Pure Pet moved to its new location at 1432 Quaker Circle in Salem over Memorial Day weekend in 2024. The new site offers space both pets and their owners can enjoy.
The former downtown location, hemmed in by sidewalks, lacked outdoor space for aquatic plants and gardens. The Quaker Circle location, situated on 1.5 acres, allowed the Ellsworths to create walking trails through a wooded area behind the business that connects to a city-owned fishing lake and paved trail.
The outdoor features now include a picnic area, birdhouses and hummingbird feeders. They’re all part of Emily’s goal to encourage customers to engage with nature.
Pure Pet also partners with rescue organizations. At the downtown store, they fostered adoptable cats through Angels for Animals, helping 600 cats find new homes. Today, the store hosts rescue pet events, including a recent celebration of its 15th anniversary that featured two rescue groups and several vendors. The turnout reaffirmed their decision to relocate.
“It was hundreds of people,” Emily said. “It was wonderful.”
Customers now come not just from Salem, but from throughout the Mahoning Valley, Akron, Canton, and as far as West Virginia, New Jersey and Maryland.
While the new location doesn’t benefit from the foot traffic of downtown restaurants, it offers plenty of parking, making it easier for customers hauling heavy bags of pet food. And it’s only a five-minute drive from downtown.
“Out here, we’re a destination business, rather than an afterthought,” Emily said.
Keith said the new location also makes inventory management and deliveries easier. Delivery drivers no longer have to drop shipments on a busy sidewalk.
“It’s more manageable, and whenever you like, you can step outside and take a little break,” he said.
The outdoor areas also provide a place for Emily and Jake, an African grey rescue parrot, to shoot educational videos for their online audience. Emily has 20 rescue parrots in total.
“I’ve brought the aviaries for my birds outside, interactive stuff, taking them for walks around the trails,” she said. “It’s really nice for people to see the other side of parrot keeping, that you don’t need to live in a cage. You can have a very good exploratory life.”
Pure Pet is a true family-run business. Their youngest son, Sam, 10, helps customers and occasionally works the register. Their older son, Chase, who grew up in the store and now works there, said he has become the go-to pet expert among his friends. He remembers being just 4 years old when the family opened its original 600-square-foot store.
Chase said he misses the murals painted by Emily at their second location, where Pure Pet operated for about 13 years. Inspired by local watercolorist Charles Burchfield, those murals have since become a Pokémon Go stop.
Emily is now adding her artistic touch to the new 7,000-square-foot space, with indoor murals and exterior stripes. A new sign is also in the works. The building, once a machine shop, has been transformed into a welcoming environment for animals, including a habitat for Jack the iguana and his bird companions.
She said iguanas like Jack often make poor pets because they grow quickly and require a lot of space.
Emily has also created a paludarium, a combination of live and artificial plants and fish.
“It took us 13 years to get where we wanted it,” she said of the old store. “We’ve only been here one year, and I’m already really happy.”
Located near the U.S. Route 62 and state Route 45 bypass, Pure Pet is open seven days a week from noon to 6 p.m.
Pictured at top: Jake, an African Grey parrot with an internet following is held by Emily Ellsworth; along with son, Chase; husband, Keith; and son, Sam (front) in front of Pure Pet. Not working Wednesday was daughter, Tori.