4
Hunter and Felicia Wyman
The Dog House owners, share insight on the busy life
of emergency foster care parents and entrepreneurs.
Hunter and Felicia come into the Moxxie studio with their 2 new adopted daughters
and one of their 7 fur babies. The ladies are all dressed up for their big debut. Mom is
wearing a hot pink dress and the girls in cute summer dresses. Dad is dressed in his
professional casual clothes, and Emmie has her signature pink bow on. After a few
minutes of dogs smelling dogs and people introducing people, we begin to settle in
for our interview.
Moxxie: Today we’re here with Felicia and Hunter
Wyman who you probably already know because they
are the owners of The Dog House, here in Waynesville.
They actually have a really tremendous story outside
of just the walls of their business and wanted to share
it here. Not only are they local business owners and
active in our community, they have just recently
become parents to their 2 newly adopted girls.
Can you tell us what your experience has been like
becoming emergency foster care parents?
Hunter: I think one of the biggest things we
experienced in the beginning was learning that there
are a lot of more foster children in our county than I
originally thought. Most of the people we run into in
the community that have kids, we assume that they
are their children. You don’t realize that they aren’t
their kids and that they are also in the foster parents’
system.
Moxxie: It sounds like it has brought a lot of
awareness to you and your family.
Hunter: Yes, it has. And the conversation pops up
sight s di i h h i d d d h
more and more as we talk to people and tell them that
we’ve adopted. We have come to find out that more
people than we could have imagined have adopted
their kids as well.
Moxxie: Aren’t you two just now newlyweds?
Felicia: Yeah. We were married in April of this year.
But we’ve been together for seven years.
Moxxie: Congratulations!
Felicia and Hunter: Thank you.
Moxxie: So here you two were… newlyweds and
business owners in Waynesville. What was the
conversation like between the two of you when you
decided that life had a bigger purpose in store and that
you would become adoptive parents?
Hunter: Well, our girls lived with us for two years
before we adopted them. The adoption was finalized
three days before we got married. They had been in
our lives for quite some time, so it wasn’t like one
day we didn’t have them, and then the next they were
there. It wasn’t like that.