Doggie Day Care: currently a fast growing trend in today’s society. What once was just a matter of signing your pet up and dropping them off has now turned into long applications, exhaustive screenings and rigorous interviews.
According to the article “Sit, Stay, Ace the Interview,” published in The Wall Street Journal, doggie day cares started popping up in the early 1990s as kennels, boarding dogs while their owners were away. The concept expanded to appeal to owners who were looking for daily care by adding playtime in open yards and daily rates.
Today, a full eight hour day of doggie care can cost between $25 and $32 dollars. Add a sleepover into that and you’re looking at $35-$55 dollars a night (TheWallStreetJournal.com).
Doggie day care centers are very desirable for both the owner and pet. Giving your dog the opportunity to interact with other dogs and obtain attention from caregivers while you are working enhances their behavior and social skills.
The process of being accepted into a doggie day care is becoming a lot like getting into an Ivy League university. It isn’t just a matter of filling out a form and picking your dog up at the end of the day. Many centers, like the one mentioned in the article, have a series of steps you must complete before being accepted into the school.
Once you’ve completed the application with difficult questions, you move on to the doggie evaluation, where your pet interacts with other dogs in a yard as you watch on a TV monitor. If you pass the evaluation, you get to leave your dog at the daycare center for three hours while staff continues to evaluate your dog’s interactions with other dog’s, monitoring how they adjust to a new environment.
These steps are important for the doggie day cares. By interviewing and evaluating prospects, care centers are able to observe temperament, activity level, attitude, aggressiveness and other attributes considered in accepting and placing your dog in a program.
“Only a small fraction of dogs –from 5% to 10%- are rejected from day care, usually because they’re aggressive, territorial or very uncomfortable interacting with other dogs day care operators say,” (TheWallStreetJournal.com).
To read the entire article published by The Wall Street Journal on doggie day care, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment