Best.Discovery.Ever.

Yesterday, we brought Rosie to our latest favourite place: the doggy daycare 15 minutes from our house.

You may dismiss me as being a crazy dog lady, one of these bourgeouis pet owners who treats their animals like children and buys them all kinds of expensive crap that they don't care about, and you'd probably be at least 35% right (I treat everyone like children ha ha). Sure Rosie gets pampered, and we buy her the healthiest food we can find, and we feed her people food (peppers, bananas, apples, broccoli, yogurt, peanut butter) as snacks to switch it up a bit, but we do that for the cats too. They occasionally get the water from our tuna cans, shrimp tails, and occasionally fish skin or other end bits that we can't stomach. They don't get as many snacks, mostly because they've traditionally had weight issues, and they only really eat meat and dairy. It's much more fun - and tidier - to give a puppy veggie snacks for good behaviour.

Anyway, back to our discovery. This daycare is actually a boarding kennel, and it's run by this supercool lady who also works at the vet's office. She's german, and no-nonsense, and has 20-something sled dogs in a seperate pen in the yard, this neat enclosure outfitted with parasols and christmas lights, where each dog has a little 'fort' made out of overturned plastic barrels, with little wooden decks and stairs. It's very neat. Those dogs seem pretty happy.

The facility itself looks like a cool brand-new house. Inside the doors, to the right, there's a sunroom with about 12 built-in pens for cats, each containing a bed, food and water dishes, a window, and a couple of tiered shelves that they can climb and sleep on.

Down the hall at the back and to the left, you enter a big concrete and chain-link-fence hall filled with barking dogs. Each dog (or family of dogs) gets their own pen, which is attached to their own outdoor dog run, so they come and go as they please. You bring your own bed and toy and food. The facility is very clean, and they seem very conscientious. When we bring the dog in, her pen has been freshly mopped, and she has a little clipboard on the front with her name on it and special instructions (one dog last week had 'needs extra cuddles' written on her instructions - she was an over-nighter). We gave her the container of food and a baggie with treats - a chunk of pepper and two chunks of banana - and she feeds them at the assigned times.

She breaks the dogs into 'teams' based on their personalities, for play time. Originally she was only going to put Rosie in with the little nice dogs, but eventually she was in with the whole gang - she's very social. I was informed that many dogs would be completely pooped that night thanks to my Rosie, who played hard until she fell promptly asleep in the playground. Then she woke up and played again. She was terrified when we dropped her off, but had a great day, and was playing with a 6-month-old Newfoundlander and my brother's neighbor's English Spaniel when we picked her up, minus one more tooth. As soon as she hit the car, she fell asleep.

And she pretty much stayed asleep until this morning.

This wonderful service costs $10 for the day, plus tax. So we figure, for once a week, to have Rosie playing with other dogs and happy and social, and to switch up her routine so she's not in a crate 5 days a week, it's worth it to her. And it's so worth it to us, because we effectively get a night off. I could have done almost anything last night. I would pay double that to be able to nap, knit, read a book, snack, or whatever (last night I assembled our new patio umbrella) for one night a week. Not that I don't enjoy hanging with Rosie in the evenings, but it's hard to get anything done when she's in full week-night mode.

Anyway, best discovery so far. Soon she will go for her first overnight, and I will be scared and sad, but it'll be part of her growing-up that she spends a night away from her humans. I hope that by now, she's learned that no matter what length of time we're away - 2 hours or a week - we always come back for her. If not, this is part of the process.