I had been researching local places that did boarding and day care. I looked up a few on Google and visited a few that interested me. A few of them were dirty and just seemed to not have great regard for the dogs. I visited Furshire and liked it and it seemed nice enough for my dog. I even ended up visiting a second time as my wife wanted to see the place before we took our puppy there.
I brought my puppy there to stay for the day just to see how she would do and get some socialization. One of the things I liked was they told me on both visits that they kept them in small groups of 3-5. When I called to check on her later on in the day, I was told she was with 9 other dogs. I was also told that somehow her foot had been run over with a chair. She apparently couldn't put any weight on it. I was distraught, but had to get through the rest of the day before I could go pick her up.
I got there at the end of the day and they told me that she couldn't put any weight on her foot and carried her out to me. My 17 week old Golden Retriever looked horrible. She was shaking and scared. She seemed very weak. I immediately inspected her and checked if her foot was tender to the touch. She seemed not to feel any direct pain. I did not let her walk at all and carried her right out to my truck.
I immediately headed straight to our vet. I let her down when we got there and let her walk so I could see how bad it was. It was worse than I thought. She could put no pressure on it and was limping horribly. The Vet inspected her and said he could see no immediate damage and wanted to do an X-Ray. I am usually leery of Vets and any extra charges and without knowing what really happened, I went ahead and had him do the X-Ray.
It ended up she had strained the ligament near her knee. Of course this cost me 250 dollars to find out. The money bothers me, but the health of my dog bothers me much more. To watch this puppy that I love that was so vibrant and always ready to play, now just limping around my house is heartbreaking. She will be fine in a few days, but that doesn't make me feel any better. We walk every morning and every night without fail. Now that isn't possible for a few days and it just compounds matters that she has all this energy and I am trying to restrict her movement.
Could it have been a freak accident? Of course, but then again I have no way of knowing. I don't think a 9 to 1 ratio really engenders good supervision. Overall, I would advise to stay clear of this place.