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| - I brought my dog into Dogtopia (Springbrook Rd. location) for the first time recently and unfortunately will most likely not be going back. The staff was friendly and my dog was returned to me happy and healthy, but that was pretty much the only positive experience.
When bringing my dog in for his initial temperament assessment I was told by the staff member that took him back that he went ahead and put my dog in with the wildest dog there just to see how he would do. That is most definitely NOT how to do a behavior assessment. With any new dog it is important to ease him/her into a new environment and make it feel comfortable. When throwing a new dog in with the "most crazy" dog there, things could go very wrong and become dangerous not only for the dogs, but also for the employees handling them.
The second unpleasant thing that I was told was that there is no real outside area and that the dogs go to the bathroom inside the playrooms - but not to worry, the floor is made of thick rubber and this does not "de-housebreak" them. Let me just go ahead and repeat this... there is no real outside area and the dogs are encouraged to go to the bathroom INSIDE. Where they play. I find it quite astonishing that the owners would even chose a location that does not have a proper outside area for dogs to play in...
The dogs sleep in small crates inside the play area. While this isn't necessarily a completely negative thing, ideally the animals should sleep in crates, runs, or suites that are separate from the play area.
When we picked up our dog he was happy and healthy, however he was returned to us smelly and with traces of poop all over his backside. I understand that dogs can get smelly while at daycare, it's completely normal... although I didn't expect him to smell like that after only being there for two days/one night. My dog has a lot of fur (a LOT) so it can happen sometimes that if he has diarrhea or loose stool it can get "stuck" on his fur and needs to be wiped off or hosed down. I was shocked that when this had happened the staff didn't do anything about it and just left the poop all over his butt. I understand that daycares may not always want to just go ahead and bathe or hose down a dog without asking the owner, but we didn't even get a call asking us if it was okay or anything; it was just ignored. Of course by the time we picked him up it was dried and extremely hard to get off... spending 20 minutes cleaning your dog's backside is not something you want to do after picking him up from daycare.
Last but not least is that when picking him up we were told that he sill had some food left, but that it was "spilled" and oops, too bad. We brought him in with enough food for three or four days, just in case. His food was double bagged so I'm not even sure how this spill would have occurred, unless staff just left it opened after feeding him. I would have expected to receive a little of the food used by the center, or at least some form of small compensation, especially given how expensive his food is. At this point though I didn't want to argue and just wanted to get home.
All in all, I am happy that my dog seemed to enjoy his time there and that the staff was friendly, but in the end, there's more to a daycare than just a friendly staff...
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