I dropped off our two 16 month old Chocolate Labs on June 28, 2018, both in impeccable condition. Our male lab weighed 97 lbs and our female weighed 87 lbs, both were extremely spoiled and in need of some proper training. Prior to their drop off, Kathryn was extremely responsive when my wife was working on drop off details, but when we dropped them off it was chaotic and very rushed. Neither of the owners offered any details, or even offered to show the facilities to us. They took our dogs, placed them in a kennel and bid us farewell. My wife and daughter were concerned from the start as to the cleanliness of the facility, but I tried to convince them they would be ok. After a couple of weeks, my wife messaged Kathryn and she replied they were doing good and were ok. My wife asked for pictures or videos ... none. This went on a couple more weeks, when finally I got involved and messaged Kathryn and Don myself. My wife wanted to pay a surprise visit as she felt it odd that the communication was minimal and the lack of pics or details was questionable and she had a very uneasy feeling as to their welfare. Finally, Kathryn copied and messaged my wife her original message as to the protocol of their training ... to remind my wife what the original message entailed. She promised pics or video again, but none. After that and me getting involved, we finally got a video of our girl, but not our boy. A week later I received one of Sig.
Although the video showed the training it was hard to see their condition. It wasn't until we arrived at the 7th week for our visit that we saw our dogs. My wife mentioned Kimber looked thin, but Don didn't seem to think so. She seemed a little intimidated, but worked well with the training and common commands given. Sig looked better, but was also a bit thinner, and he too worked well with common commands. Kimber had a small place on top her nose that was healing and Sig had a small tear on his ear that was healing, and there was no explanation as to what it was from. The dogs smelled obviously liked outside kennel dogs (which we were not use to since they were house dogs). Against my wife's request we left the dogs there another week to finish training. After all, we paid $1,400 per dog for this 8 weeks of training.
My daughter and I returned the following Saturday to pick our brown babies up. When we arrived Don was bathing them. He went over some working details with us and gave us direction for the coming days as to keeping them in routine for training. We got our dogs and returned them home.
Kimber looked very thin and very broken in her spirit. Sig appeared a bit thin, and not quite himself. Sunday morning we woke up and noticed Kimber was scratching her ear and upon pulling her ear back we noticed she had a tick in her ear. Then after further inspection, we discovered she was infested in ticks. We called our daughter to inform her to inspect Sig and she did, and he too was totally infested in ticks.
I sent a text to Don and the only comment was "Sorry, I did see one on Kimber's back and pulled it off, but didn't think to look all over her" that was it. We had to get oral meds from our Vet for them to take to kill the ticks, and after weighing them both we discovered Kimber was down almost 15 pounds and Sig 11.
How can a kennel not be held to cleanliness standards when boarding animals? When you take your pets for training or boarding in great condition and they return less than what they were when dropped off, and all you get is sorry? I guess the training was ok, I wouldn't say $1,400 a dog worth, but they do better on a leash than before, but for the money we paid and the condition of our dogs when we got them back ... we feel like what we put our dogs through and the conditions of uncleanliness and tick infestation was abuse. Our hearts break for their care for the past 8 weeks, and had we of known ... we would have kept the rowdy, care free Labs we had. No animal should be subjected to poor care.
Yes our dogs lead better on walks and command, but please be careful when you take your animals here for boarding, the kennels are dirty and your animals most likely will return with ticks.
I only rate them with one star because they do lead better than before. But for any other rating as to cleanliness and pet care ... horrible. read more