The Elizabeth Bay pet shop where they know your dog's name before yours

Some dogs walk into Pets Point and forget their owner exists.

They know where the treats live. They know who is behind the counter. A few have quietly decided the shop is, functionally, their pantry.

"They drag their owners towards the door," says owner Madi. "Some of them have absolutely no interest in their owner once they realise they've arrived at Pets Point."

The shop sits in the middle of Elizabeth Bay, one of Sydney's densest pockets of apartment-dwelling dog people, and stocks a deliberately small range of dog and cat food, treats and supplies, weighted heavily towards local small brands. It started smaller still: a handful of premium dog foods and a few treats.

Madi got into pet retail in 2013 and never looked back. She was working for someone else when she clocked what was sitting in front of her.

"My previous employer wasn't fully capitalising on the potential I could see," she says. "I realised there was an opportunity to build something really special in what is such a huge doggy hotspot. I didn't want to sit back and watch that opportunity pass me by."

So she backed herself.

The thing that makes Pets Point different is not the range. It's the ruthlessness of it. Madi has grown the shop by deliberately curating rather than carrying everything, and she is unapologetic about the products that don't make the cut.

"Every product has to earn its place. I'd rather have a smaller selection of things I genuinely believe in than fill the shop with products just because they're commercially popular."

That extends to how the shop actually sells. Advice is tailored to the individual animal, its health, lifestyle and environment, rather than pointed at a shelf. There is a palatability guarantee across the entire food range, which is not a small thing to offer when you have hand-picked every product on the shelf. There is also a tasting bar. "Making sure the hungry pups of the neighbourhood get to sample the good stuff," Madi says, "is a very important part of our purpose."

Her confidence in the range comes from somewhere specific.

"People don't think of their animals as 'pets' in the traditional sense. They're family."

Pets Point gets a look at the whole arc of that: the new puppy, the food changes, the birthday present, the slowing down. "I'm not just selling products," Madi says. "I'm recommending things for animals that people adore."

What she didn't anticipate was how quickly the shop would stop being a shop.

Pets Point now runs pet portrait days with a professional photographer, has had an artist in to draw caricatures of customers' dogs, hosts cat adoption days for rescues, collaborates with other local venues, and has started an ongoing dinner series for local dog mums, women from the same few streets who would otherwise never have met.

Plenty of people come in without buying anything at all.

"You don't even necessarily have to have a pet to come in," Madi says. "There is almost always someone there having a chat amongst friends while their dog gets the best snacks available."

At home, she is comprehensively outnumbered. There's Lewis, a very big personality in a very small, stocky package, with the confidence of a dog three times his size. Madi's own description is hard to improve on: "basically Danny DeVito in sunnies."

Then there are the four cats. Mackerel, appropriately obsessed with water and fish. Leo, the baby, and fully aware of it. Florence, a sweet and scream-y Siamese. And Henry the ragdoll, who Madi reckons is more dog than most dogs.

The same care goes into the team. They're trained by brand reps and nutritionists, trusted to run the floor like it's their own, and thanked for it constantly.

The plan from here is growth, carefully. More local brands, more events, more reasons to walk in. Just not at the cost of the bit that works.

"I want Pets Point to continue being the local dog community's home away from home," Madi says. "With really bloody good snacks."

Pets Point is one of a handful of pet stores in Elizabeth Bay. You'll find it, and every park, café and beach worth the walk, on the Dog Directory map.