My local Petsmart has doggie daycare, so I dropped Kaya off there this morning for her first time.
I swear I felt like I was putting a child into kindergarden - instead of sweaters and extra socks, I took food and treats!

I phoned them at noon to see how she was doing, got told she had already made friends with a 1 year old Lab and was having a grand old time and not to worry.

I think it's a great solution for anyone who wants to give their dog a bit of stimulation. Costs about 20 bucks and they're open from 7am to 9pm if you need it.

It's awesome! All dogs at our day care need to be spayed/neutered, vaccinated, they get evaluated for temperament prior to being admitted and need to be on flea meds. Waaay better than our ghetto ass dog parks with crazy dog parents. Our dogs love their little buddies and we coordinate dates to meet up with the other huskies!

Ghetto ass dog parks - love it

Another bonus I discovered after picking up Kaya about 5pm, was that she was KNACKERED. It's only a 10 minute drive home but she was half asleep in the car the whole way.
It was great to get her home, give her dinner and then she was just calm and restful the rest of the evening. What a pleasure! LOL.

Our dog park is pretty nice and I take Cloud there because I can't take him to daycare yet as he isn't neutered. Once he's neutered I may take him to daycare sometime in December, although I probably wouldn't be able to leave him there all day as he WON'T make messes inside and he will force himself to hold it as long as he possibly can. Glad it worked out for ya, that sounds like Cloud and Yuki after an hour or so at the dog park lol!

Interesting I'll need to check this out in my area. I'm usually worried about leaving my dog in others hands without really getting to know them, even if it's for a couple of hours.

shush I'm a concerned parent!

lol. Just do your research. I work at a doggie day care and I've heard some not so great stories about other daycares from the owner. But for the most part, I think it's easy to find a good one. The one I work at lets all the dogs play together during the day, in crates at night (they do boarding too), and when it's warm out the dogs get to swim!

It was a mad house yesterday with everyone dropping off their dogs to be boarded over Thanksgiving! We about ran out of crates!

I take my pups to Camp Bow wow here the dogs can play both outside and inside there is a door the seperates the outside and inside the dogs can go thru.

ALso we can watch them on video cam from our PC while they are there to see how things are going for them.

I haven't taken them in a while havn't had a need.

Luna went to puppy daycare for the first time today too. I'm glad Kaya had a good time!

What I really like about the setup at my local Petsmart is that the dogs are not all lumped in one space together. They have 3 rooms and the dogs are placed depending on their energy level and their size.

I scored 2 free daycare vouchers originally, so Kaya will go back tomorrow for her second session. After that, I might try get her in for one day a week or perhaps every second week, we'll see how things go.

SaraB wrote:

lol. Just do your research. I work at a doggie day care and I've heard some not so great stories about other daycares from the owner.

Back at my old job, I heard some crazy stories about Petsmart policies since 3 of my coworkers use to work there. Personally, I like the mom and pop daycares. Corporate is a really hard thing to deal with. My work would have been a LOT better if I didn't have to run things by the idiots at corp.

Daycare is awesome though. I use to take mine every Friday, but since I'm home a lot, I don't bother as much anymore. When I worked at a bank 5 days a week, 8 hours, back when Koda was 10 months, he went 5 days a week. Helped him a lot with his human and dog interaction and manners!

Bodhi LOVES doggie daycare.
He goes half a day, once a week.
He's totally "knackered" when he comes home.
Dogs are separated into big dog and little dog rooms.
They are segregated into single rooms when the dogs first arrive so everyone can sniff and get used to each other and calm down before they are released into the general populace.
The attendants walk around with the dogs carrying spray bottles in case any play gets too rough.
I wish I had used this with my huskies before Bodhi, because his socialization is way better, thanks to day care, than my earlier dogs.