Dogtopia Papillion, 10411 Portal Road…read more
My dog Sophie attended this location for daycare and boarding for 14 years, since she was a puppy. In 14 years she was never aggressive, never in a fight, and never once flagged by staff as a problem with another dog.
On July 20, 2026, I dropped her off for daycare. When I picked her up that afternoon, the front desk told me there had been an "incident." Sophie was lying behind the counter, unresponsive to me. A groomer showed me a wound that had already been cleaned, disinfected, and bathed. No one could tell me what happened. The front desk employee said it occurred before her 1:00 shift. The groomer said she wasn't present either. The facility has cameras. The only explanation offered was that Sophie and another small dog "got into a scuffle."
No one called me. I was home all day. Had I been notified, I could have taken her to our regular vet. Instead I learned of the injury at pickup. I left Dogtopia at 4:30 and called my vet from the car. They had no openings left and closed at 6, so they advised Animal Urgent Care, at significantly higher cost, because dog bites can turn serious. When the groomer lifted Sophie, she yelped and then would not put weight on her leg. Urgent Care shaved the wound site, put her on antibiotics, and sent her home in a cone for 7 to 10 days with instructions to clean the wound.
I was still charged for a half day of daycare on the day my dog was injured in their care. I was not told whether the other dog would be there the next day. I was instead told Sophie "just lay there and didn't seem to enjoy it" and that I probably shouldn't bring her back, which directly contradicts the staff's own claim that the dogs were "playing."
I emailed on July 20 requesting reimbursement of the urgent care bill. I received no response. I followed up on July 21. Stephanie, the General Manager, then left me a voicemail. The recording began before she realized it had started, and captured her mid-conversation with another employee, talking about me. What it recorded her saying was: "She called me a fricking liar." She then turned to the phone, greeted me professionally, and explained that she'd had a busy week and had planned to schedule something with me the following week.
Her subsequent email apologized for the delay in communication, something I had never complained about and had expressly said was not my issue. It did not offer to cover the urgent care bill, or any portion of it. I replied clarifying exactly what I was asking for: the urgent care bill, or at minimum the difference between it and a standard vet visit, since their failure to notify me is what forced the emergency visit.
She never responded. That was over two weeks ago.
The scuffle isn't the failure. Dogs scuffle. The failure is that nobody called me, nobody could tell me what happened despite having video, I was charged for the day my dog was injured, my 14 year customer relationship was treated as disposable, and the General Manager's private reaction to being asked about a contradiction in her own staff's story was to say I called her a fricking before she remembered the line was recording.
