Fiona Tobler recently created her Happy Tired Dog service to provide high-energy dogs, like her border collie mix Marty, with activities to keep them occupied and out of mischief. She is one of several Howard County women who have started businesses based on needs they have found in the community. Photo by Jenni Combs

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Recently, after spending decades on other pursuits, three Howard County women independently decided it was time for them to start up their own companies — both for- and not-for-profit.

It wasn’t so much a sudden — or even a lingering — desire toward entrepreneurship that moved them to create their new enterprises. Rather, each wanted to fill a perceived community need.

Sandra Nettina, 57, a nurse practitioner with 25 years of experience, decided it was time for a medical professional to revive the once common practice of house calls. Prime Care House Calls operates out of Nettina’s West Friendship home.

Susan Cohen, 60, a former longtime resident of Columbia and Ellicott City, recently moved to Kansas. She began a nonprofit organization, Americans for Older Driver Safety (AFODS), that has a grant for work in Maryland.

A dogged pursuit

For Columbia resident Fiona Tobler, 61, it was the recent acquisition of a mixed border collie named Marty that led her to see that a regimen of “enrichment training” was necessary in order for her dog (as well as all other canines, and their owners) to find contentment. Thus was born Happy Tired Dog, Inc.

Tobler worked at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 34 years. When she retired in 2009, she decided to get the first dog she had owned since she was a child.

The training sessions, she pointed out, are especially helpful for dog owners who are “busy, tired, short on time, physically impaired, or just wild about having fun with dogs.”

Besides making house calls, Tobler sells a 30-minute video (price $15) on her Happy Tired Dog website. Her 90-minute in-home sessions cost $75. She brings along all the training toys, and guarantees that “your dog will be tired when I leave.” 

Susan Cohen’s nonprofit enterprise was spurred by a family tragedy. In 2011, Cohen’s 20-year-old son was killed by a car while biking near Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he was a student. An 83-year-old driver turned into the bike lane without noticing him.

Cohen, a lawyer who had worked in the Maryland attorney general’s office, was studying for a career switch to public health when the tragedy occurred. She then began to research safety and older drivers, and found what she felt was a paucity of concern.

“I realized this was an area of public health neglected across the country. There is plenty of public awareness for seat belt use, but little about driving safety and the elderly. I decided I should help raise awareness of aging and driving, and of medical conditions that can make it unsafe for older people to drive,” she said.

Cohen offers seminars around the area to help make older drivers more aware of medical impairments that come with aging that could affect their judgment or physical abilities.

“It’s not about age, it’s about function,” she said. “But as we age, our ability to drive a car changes.” 

Cohen suggests drivers start downsizing their driving time after the age of 70, cut down on nighttime driving, and ask family members to ride along to observe their abilities or any decline thereof.

She noted that the aging of the baby boom generation, who took to the wheel like no other generation before or after, makes the concern a growing one. The number of Americans age 65 or older is expected to more than double by 2050 — from the current 40 million to 88 million.  

State driving laws also have come under Cohen’s scrutiny. Among other things, she has been advocating for a change in the Maryland Department of Transportation regulations regarding driver license renewals, which are required every eight years.

Drivers need to appear in person for eye exams at a motor vehicles office only every other renewal — or once every 16 years.    

“Older drivers should have to renew more frequently,” Cohen believes. “They’re not worse drivers, but they’re more likely to have medical impairments” that a trained DMV staffer could spot.

To learn more about Americans for Older Driver Safety, call (443) 520-9716 or visit www.afods.org.