Boarding disasters...

[Golightly]

In light of Jenyfer9's boarding disaster, I felt complled to share my own. Anyone else?

My DH and I had to fly to Florida from Philadelphia on rather short notice once. My mother in law found this "great older lady" that boards dogs in her home.

My husband took our Siberian Husky, Chewy over there to drop him off before our flight and the place was crazy. Her whole house was a big dog lounge. There were two other dogs staying there as well, a big golden and a couple of terriers I think. Chewy got right in the mix and was tearing around, having a great time after about 5 minutes.

I guess my husband felt sort of weird just leaving our dog with this woman, but we had no other choice as everything else was booked.

We get on our flight, try to relax, land in Florida, get our bags, hop in the car... and five minutes later, DH's cell phone rings.

"Don't worry, we found your lost dog! We have Chewy!"

'Wait, what?!"

It was some random family who found Chewy galloping down the street all by himself! They didn't understand that we were in Florida and couldn't come and get him in the next five minutes. I guess they had somewhere to be and were going to just let him go!

We freaked out, had to call MIL away from work to go collect Chewy. Then we had to call kennel and BEG them to take him (which they did, bless their souls.)

Chewy escaped (apparently thanks to the dexterous Golden), was found, rescued by MIL, and delivered to kennel. All before the "great older lady" even found out he was missing. I guess she would leave the dogs alone all day in her backyard and go to work.

Thank god that the people who found him were kind enough to call us and hang onto him long enough for us to make arrangements. So many Siberians never turn up again because people either just keep them, steal them, or hurt them (because they think they're dangerous.)

As a breed trait, Chewy has very little "homing instinct" so he probably couldn't have found his way home if he wanted to... not to mention he was in a strange neighborhood, in a strange state, with no one looking for him.

I still shudder every time I think about it.

[silvergrey]

I can commiserate.

DH and I flew to Michigan to visit his family for a week, and left our dog at a local kennel. He'd stayed there before, but only for a couple days at a time. The kennel uses these elevated cots for beds. I guess Blizzard didn't like the cot, so he spent a week laying on the concrete floor. Did they give him some blankets, or even some freaking towels? No. Did they call me so I could have a friend bring over some blankets? No. They just let my super-super-skinny greyhound sleep on concrete for a week. When we got back, he had huge, ugly pressure sores all over. I was so pissed! Just writing this makes me want to call them up and scream at them.

[Golightly]

How can someone just let any creature suffer like that?!

Our "great old lady" was just dumb and oblivious, not cruel. I'm so sorry for your dog! Is he okay now?

[silvergrey]

He took awhile to heal, but he did fully recover, thank goodness. I can't believe the crazy dogsitter lady would just leave a bunch of strange dogs in her yard all day! You know it's only a matter of time til she comes home and finds one attacked, maybe even dead. Ugh. What are people thinking sometimes??

[mb1197]

I'll share my story about our boarding experience in July. I posted this in my LJ....

When I dropped Sasha off at the kennel I had told them the time we were flying back in and let them know that we would be grabbing our bags and immediately going to pick her up. I knew I'd be anxious to see her so I was very clear that was the plan.

Anyway, I'm at baggage claim calling the lady who owns the place and there's no answer. I left a message in case she was outside and we decided to stop and get groceries on our way hoping that she would call me back and let me know she was there and ready for me to come pick Sasha up. No such luck. I called again (an hour and a half later) and still no answer. Sooooo, I said screw this, I'm going to get my dog. We drove there to find nobody home and Sasha outside in the 95 degree heat with a dog that nearly took DH's hand off when he went to pet Sasha. A little more than peeved at this point, I was truly hoping that maybe they stepped out for a moment and would be right back. Nope. Waited. Nobody came. To our surprise the place was completely unlocked and so we managed to get her away from the other dog and into the air conditioned kennel which is where she should have been in the first place if they were going to be out - she's a Siberian Husky for goodness sake!

She was overheated and covered in clay. Fine, she's a white dog and she does get dirty. I can deal with that, but she was panting like crazy and I didn't notice any water outside. At this point my temper has flared to a dangerous level. I know that if I stick around for this lady to come back someone was getting hurt and it wasn't gonna be me. I wrote a check and left it inside the kennel and left her a 3rd message to call me when she returned (which she did 3 hours later).

I was really upset for the following reasons:

1) I was told that Sasha would have short intervals of supervised play time outside in the yard. This obviously was not the case as she was left unattended for hours in excessive heat.

2) The place was not locked. Anyone could have walked right in there at any point and taken one of the dogs.

3) They told me they would make sure she was not left out with any dog that was aggressive in any way. She was left outside with a dog that was fairly nasty in my opinion.

4) When I dropped her off on July 1st I was greeted by the owner's 14 year old daughter. The owner simply waved from the pool area (kennel is on their property) and didn't bother to ask for any of my contact info. (which I of course gave anyway). I was somewhat bothered by this initially but passed it off as it being a family business and since this was my first time boarding maybe I was being a little overprotective.

I had chosen this place based on a number of recommendations I had received from work along with the fact that this is the place that my parents board their dog. I had gone with DH in advance to check it out and really loved it. The property was gorgeous. The kennels were clean and air conditioned. They didn't board more than 6-8 dogs at a time. And it was right next to their house so I felt she would be safe. I never expected to come home and see Sasha outside, panting, filthy, with an aggressive dog and totally unsupervised.:mad: