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| - Recently transplanted from Chicago, and sad to leave our great dog daycare place behind there, I thought we had found the best place to bring our dog when we needed boarding services. When one of us had to go out of town for work, the other would bring our dog in for a day of play to distract him. Last week, I picked him up from a day of daycare, and an employee recommended that I watch the "pup cams" during the day. So yesterday I tuned in, and as a result of what I saw, I left work early to get my dog out of there and will NEVER be going back.
It takes a bit of training to understand dog behavior, and to modify your own behavior to effectively communicate with them. I do not think that any of the handlers in the pens have had any of that training. The first few times I peeked at the cam footage in the morning, the handlers all just seemed to be bored, wandering around the pen, barely interacting with the dogs. One girl was on her phone a lot. The owner came in and stood around for a bit, also engrossed in his phone. As the day progressed, I noticed that one particular handler used her knees to shove dogs out of her way (she couldn't be bothered to go around them). She also constantly shoved her knees in between dogs at play (tails up and wagging, jumping on one another, rolling around with wagging tails, bowing down in classic play behavior). It would have been one thing if this only happened once, but every time a couple of dogs would start to play, in she would come, jabbing her knees into chests and ribs. A boxer tried to snuggle up to her (it sat very close, almost on her feet, and stared up at her: submissive behavior), and she stared down at it, gave it a knee in the chest, and walked away. Handlers switched spots quite a lot through the afternoon, and a girl from earlier in the day came in: her tactic was to come up quickly on a dog and stomp on the floor in front of it, which she did all around the big dog room, sometimes backing a dog into a corner by aggressively stomping toward it. So we had one girl going around stomping at them, the other jamming her knees into them, discouraging them from playing. Everyone looked stressed out and unhappy, the handlers included.
At one point in the afternoon, Girl 1 started beating her hand against the wall between the big dog and little dog pens, yelling over the partition at something on the other side. Later, Girl 2 picked up the mop, presumably to clean up some pee, and when a dog got too close to her (I guess??) she banged the mop handle against the floor in its direction. Some of the dogs lying around napping jumped up at the sound and looked alarmed.
I think the handlers suffer from no training, and maybe just youth (I am bad at judging ages but these people looked young and inexperienced to me). I bet it was hot in there, and smelly, and cleaning up dog pee and poop while 15 or so rambunctious pups get all up in your business every five seconds must be annoying. HOWEVER, perhaps that's why it takes a certain kind of person with a certain kind of training, and patience, to care for a bunch of other people's dogs?
There's no excuse for the aggressive, disinterested, and angry behavior I saw on the pup cams. None, whatsoever. Throughout the day, I saw maybe one or two pats on the head, and most of the rest of what I saw seemed irritated, disinterested, noisy, pushy, and downright aggressive. My dog is a huge sweetheart who LOVES people and wants to be with them, and also loves a good roughhouse with another dog. From what I saw on the cam, he spent most of the day curled in a ball, off by himself, only coming near the handlers when someone came to the pen gate (when all the dogs think they're getting picked up, and everyone gets excited).
Before I left work to get him, I thought: am I just being over sensitive? Am I one of those crazy "dog mom" ladies now? I looked at Yelp, where I'd found only good reviews weeks ago, and sure enough, someone else recently complained about this exact. same. thing. I decided it doesn't matter if I am crazy, or over sensitive: there's enough meanness and aggression in the world right now, and I'm going to do what I can to keep my little section of it as peaceful as possible. From a previous review, it sounds like the owner chooses not to hear this particular criticism, so I didn't waste my time talking to him. We won't be going back, and I hope this review encourages you to do the same.
Let's all find a place for our pups where they're kind to smaller creatures.
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