Adventures in Doggy Daycare

Now that Buster has recovered from surgery, Dr. Ikezawa gave her the all-clear to go to Doggy Daycare. Before we had decided to get a dog, I looked up doggy day care centers on the Peninsula. The most convenient one I found was a place in Redwood City, called Bark Park, Inc. It's only about 10 minutes away from where I work.

The website is a little amateurish and some of the images don't show up properly, but I wasn't going to judge them based on that, so I decided to check this place out last Monday, with the hope of taking Buster there starting on Tuesday. I called several times over the weekend, but no one ever answered the phone. Someone called me back on Monday and I asked if I could make an appointment to check the place out that evening. The person I talked to made it sound like it was a big inconvenience, but we managed to settle on a time for that afternoon.

I got to Bark Park and met with the woman. She gave me a tour of the facility. To their credit, it seemed very clean. But other than that, I wasn't very impressed. There was a large caged area for smaller dogs (maybe 25 pounds and less?) that looked o.k. -- it had a few couches in it, but there were so many dogs in it. It just seemed a little overcrowded.

The area for the bigger dogs seemed a lot more barren -- they were basically in a large outdoor, concrete dog run. The lady said the dogs rotated between the indoor and outdoor areas, but the outdoor areas seemed pretty barren. There were also a ton of dogs in that area.

All of the dogs went crazy as we were walking by. There had to be at least 50 dogs. Aside from the woman giving me a tour, I saw one person working in the back, grooming a dog. So, who was there to watch the dogs in case something happened? It definitely seemed like there was inadequate staffing and the dogs seemed attention starved by how crazy they got when we walked by.

I was pretty disappointed by this, since it was the one place I had found that seemed like it would be convenient. I went online again and, I have no idea how I missed this during my first search, but I managed to find Planet Pooch. This place has two locations that are both convenient for us -- one in Redwood City (close to Bark Park, actually) and another in South San Francisco a few miles from our apartment. It's also cheaper than Bark Park ($495 for 20 visits vs. $500) and has a much more professional website, including web cams of the facilities so you can watch your dog during the day!

I called and asked if I could drop in to check the place out and it was no problem. The woman I spoke with on the phone was very friendly and informative. When Richie and I got to Planet Pooch that night, we were really impressed -- the front room had a one-way mirror so we could look in at the dogs, but they couldn't really see us. Both the large dog area and small dog areas were partly inside and outside. The outside areas had gravel like stuff in it, so it wasn't just barren concrete. Then there was also another area that had some sort of AstroTurf type material that the dogs could play in.

I swung by the next day to drop off our application materials and to let Buster sniff the place out. The owner happened to be there and offered to do an evaluation interview right then. We went into a separate enclosed area with couches and a coffee table. One of the "house dogs" (the owners' dogs that get to roam around in the front with the staff) came in there with us. Buster seemed to be doing fine. The guy brought in Husky-type dog and Buster got along with her too. Then he brought in a goofy Vizsla and then an American Bulldog and Buster was fine with both of them, so he let her go into the area with the other dogs. I was a little nervous since she had been a little snappish at the dog park when she was overwhelmed, but apparently she did o.k. because the owner came back and said she was fine and seemed confident with all the dogs!

Buster had her first day at Planet Pooch on Wednesday, and I think things went well! I'm pretty sure I saw her on the web cam a couple of times and she seemed really mellow. Yay!