Doggy Daycare question

I almost never take my eyes off the dogs unless they're crated or sometimes we treadmill one while we work the other but we xpen around the 'mill, we don't tether on. The only other exception is if I tuck in the office I might allow two really reliable dogs to continue playing with the door open and them in the hallway.

We have a client who used another daycare in town that has 2 people per room and each room has 20-40 dogs with rooms separated by small dogs, big dog adults, big dog puppies, and puppy puppies. I know a lot of people use them but this particular client picked up their dog and it had a laceration inside the eye lid below the eyeball. The workers then said, that must have been there, no that wasn't there, so they said, must be allergies. My client never returned.

She was also upset that there never seemed to be the same employees in all the times they went (a couple times for a trial, then a boarding for a week). I'm not shocked though, the daycares here from what I remember when applying years ago paid barely minimum wage which can make it hard to hold employees.

I have however heard of and seen outside of this city some really great daycares. Like one in San Diego that I would totally send my dogs to if I had appropriate dogs (Sloan might be). My friend used them for years and it was always clean, happy, and seemed very safe.

We absolutely have eyes on the dogs at all times, and one person at minimum in the yards. If theres a certain number of dogs, it must be two or more people in the yard. We cut off numbers at a certain amount as well. Every dog through the doors for daycare or boarding is required to go through a temp test and if the dog isn't cut out for daycare, they're excused pretty much and we recommend other facilities that can and will accept that type of dog, usually for boarding.

Absolutely no aggression towards other dogs or humans allowed, and if the dog is a bully, they're asked to leave pretty much. We're pretty strict as to what type of dog is allowed to come play. We do utilize supression techniques rather than training because as a facility that runs over thirty dogs in a yard, we can't train the dogs that come through the doors. We refer these clients out as well.

I understand that...I worked for a guy that ran daycare/boarding and it is hard work for not much money. It seems around here though people get some kennels and they don't 'hire' people, they run it just themselves and probably stretch themselves thin. I was a little surprised though as the girl was active in training, showing, and rescue with her breed..thought she would be more professional.

At the daycare I worked, the owner didn't have a clue...he was a jerk to the dogs and was always screaming and kicking the kennels for them barking. One day an ACD latched onto a mini aussie, and I had it broken up quickly...he heard the noise, came out with a slip lead and 'hung' the ACD mid air while he walked from the yard to the kennels... I was spitting mad, couldn't hold my tongue, and quit that day. It makes me really wary knowing what I know..this place seemed great on the outside and there were so many bad things about it.

I did a working interview at a dog daycare and the reason I didn't take the job was because of the intense supervision. It drove me crazy the 2 hours I was there. I can not keep my eyes on 20+ dogs at the same time, WHILE cleaning the play area. And that is what the job is. Lol so yes, I would say a good daycare absolutely supervises them. Juno's daycare has webcams set up and whenever I turn it on, there's always a person or two floating around... so they are watched as well.

Plus this place in particular doesn't allow the dogs to engage in like, any normal dog play activity... so they need someone to pretty much be available to constantly intervene. Which was annoying as well.

Sorry for taking this a little off track...I'll say that I worked pretty strictly in kennel boarding only and it was consistently crazy during the summer and quieter the rest of the year.

No sweat, I don't mind the wandering topic.

Where I've worked, out of necessity, we don't allow loud/grumbly play behaviors because it can and will rile everyone up. We don't allow zoomies in the yard, running really fast is discouraged because it can hurt just about anyone in the yard if the dog slips, skids, stumbles or slams into anyone or anything.

Bullying behavior is suppressed, ganging up on one dog is not allowed, ect.

I usually only play 2 dogs unless I have a group of relatively gentle dogs or a group of ball loving but not ball possessive dogs. Like I have 3 goldendoodles, 2 border collies, 1 lab, 1 great dane puppy, 1 gsd/husky puppy, and 1 aussie (sometimes) that I can let all out together and play fetch with one of the doodles and one of the collies while the rest happily trot along and lightly wrestle. We're rarely that lucky though, to have that pack all there on the same day.

I have two regulars, a lab and an aussie, that I call my social butterflies to their owners and my sluts to my manager. They can play with anyone and often I let them out and rotate the boys through for 10-15 minute sessions of play. Their owners of course love those days because those girls go home and crash!

When I did a short stint at a doggy daycare the only dogs you were ever allowed to let out and not watch were the owners. You could let their dogs out, or the staff's dogs out if they brought them in and had permission to and just ignore them out in the yard. Other than that it was a huge no no.

Lol! I can't remember where I saw it, but we now call the dogs that are constantly getting humped our "daycare bicycle"

And there are certain dogs like that that come that I will seperate into a different yard by themselves and let them just balls to the wall it for hours. They always go home exhausted.

Staff dogs are different where I work. Because all of our dogs are jerks. Knox is allowed in my yard and two other peoples yards. Enzo is allowed in almost everyones yard, but they must be able to control her freakouts when I'm out of the building. Almost everyone does, but she doesn't come often because she's a stressball there. So it's only bath days that she comes. Knox has his buddies he's allowed to be in the yard with alone, but other than myself, one of my bosses and one other employee's yard who knows him and knows how to handle him, he's out alone.

Eww. Thinking of this makes me SO friggin glad I don't work at the hotel anymore!!! We would have 300 dogs boarding almost constantly, booked to the max. And then on random weekends we'd get 50 walk-in daycare dogs! And they had to stay in daycare all day long, because our kennels were completely full. And the dogs who were boarding who had daycare had to do it 6 am-9 am, then 5 pm-9 pm because our daycare play rooms were packed. Ahhh makes me not miss working there at all...

Where I live, it gets pretty hot during the summer. Like 100*. So a lot of people would bring their dogs in for the day because it was too hot outside to take them to the dog park or anything, and the daycare was fully inside. But, yeah, the majority were crazy hyper dogs or wild puppies that really need hours of exercise a day, not so much the seasoned regulars who came in while their owners worked. I think it's because the kids are home during summer, there aren't rainy days, and more people are going on vacay and boarding rather than daycare.

The daycare I worked at very often had only one person there at a time with up to 30ish dogs on a busy day. No separation of dogs by size or anything, small building and huge fenced play yard (6' fence with n anti-digging set up) with a smaller cement area fenced off and 7 outside kennel runs on cement. If a dog was bad, they went into the kennel run. If it was a muddy mess, they were only allowed in the building and cement area. During the summer we were outside for the majority of the day. With the set up being what it was, dogs were left alone for short bursts of time because there was only one person. So for example if they were outside when someone came to pick up, the dog being picked up was let in and the rest stayed out. If they were in and a customer came in, I generally tried to get them all out while I took care of the person inside. Interestingly, I don't think anything ever happened when the dogs were left alone. Any major incidents happened when the dogs were being supervised and often when there happened to be more than one person there. When you went into the building from the yard, most of the dogs would just stand at the gate waiting for you to come back, so their minds were elsewhere.

We're a boarding kennel (in a veterinary office), but we are PACKED during the summer. This last weekend we were swamped - I'd say almost as booked as we typically get over the holidays. This weekend is going to be about the same. Boo...I like it when we're busy, not over the top stressful busy.

To give you some idea, we had 74 dogs today. But we also board and are open 7 days a week. And we are located close to a major hospital and a huge tourist attraction, so we get a lot of visitors to the area.

Right now we're slam packed, between vacations and people getting that summer puppy.

Drop in daycare?

I have never heard of such a thing. Do most places do that, or just the big box stores?

We sometimes had people call super early in the morning asking if they could bring their dog (regulars), but never just show up!

We don't require reservations actually, but we're small and have the capability of separating everyone if need be.

Look ma! Three labs, black, chocolate, and yellow... Right?

We still take walk-ins at my work. It's working fine the moment but we realize that may not always be the case.

Petsmart Pet Hotel is stupid AF... they are not allowed to ever. EVER. Turn away walk-in daycare dogs. Even if we had more dogs in daycare than our playrooms can hold, even if 3 people called in sick that morning and no one else would come in and there were 300 dogs to care for, we'd just have to make it work. Sometimes there would be 30 dogs in every 17 maximum room! People would stroll in the day before Christmas Eve with their dog who had never even been there before, and expect us to tell all of our boarders paying hundreds of dollars to wait while we whisk away this unannounced, unknown dog to daycare... like "Wait, a pet hotel is busy during the holidays? Odd..." And we had to take them.

The douchebag garden gnome store manager would come in and watch us, to make sure we weren't turning away daycare dogs, even with a line of 15 people checking their dogs in for long-term boarding with giant tubs of food, toys and beds to catalogue. And he would bring his own psychotic midget Brittany in to harass other dogs and scream all day without forewarning when he KNEW we were beyond capacity!

Some daycares are amazing, I love the ones with small groups of dogs who actually all get along! I'd be in a tiny room with 20 dogs... giant goofy Dane puppies, crazy barking Labs, angry Border Collies, and aggressive Boxers and have to keep them all from killing each other, getting filthy, and playing too wildly. Just hellish. And dogs who bit other dogs were given second chances time & time again, which is so unfair to the dogs they bit and their owners. I don't miss the Pet Hotel. A big-box corporation that is based on selling pet products has no business trying to fit into the specialized business that is boarding and daycare. They value profits over everything, and the care of the dogs takes a total backseat to making money with as little cost to the company and as little pay to the employees as possible. I was a supervisor, and at one point there was an amazing team there, we were all friends and made sure all of the dogs were happy and got excellent care. But so many people, including me, couldn't stand being treated like we were disposable by the company and our hard work was never acknowledged... only our mistakes, any mistake we made! Usually my mistakes were caring too much, spending too much time on one dog who needed it, working too late to make sure all the dogs were healthy, etc. We would make sure all of the boarding dogs had clean rooms and beds at all times, walk them to the playrooms to exercise & potty at least 4 times a day whether they paid for extra play or not, and make sure that if dogs weren't eating we called the owners and added canned food or something to get them to eat. I heard from EVERY other hotel around the country that dogs whose owners don't pay for extra play times only get out twice a day! And their potty break is 5 minutes, in a 10 x 4 "relief room" with a toilet in it that's in between the play rooms. So sad. I actually got in trouble for working extra hard to make sure all of the boarding dogs got plenty of potty breaks and play time.

Yikes, that's why I'm so glad I work for a small company. A small company with a huge yard. LOL