Friday, October 30, 2009

Possible Changes

If you've tried to book a spot for your dog at daycare lately, you'll have discovered that we are so busy that you need to be calling almost a week in advance to get a spot. We've been scratching our heads and brainstorming ways that we could potentially make things run more smoothly and possibly even accommodate more dogs without actually having more dogs here at one time.

One of the things we've realized is that the mornings are generally quieter than the afternoons. So we started taking a closer look at our schedule:

  • We have dogs that stay all day and these dogs generally arrive between 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.
  • We also have dogs that stay for a half day that generally arrive either first thing in the morning, between noon and 1, or mid to late morning.
  • By around 11 or 12 we are in full swing, but on most days the morning is much less busy.

So our idea is this: We are thinking of making our half days more structured so that the half-day dogs are either here in the morning (any 5-hour period between 7 a.m and 1 p.m.) or the afternoon (any 5-hour period between noon and 6 p.m.). Most of the half-day dogs currently come in the afternoon so this would open up more spaces in the morning.

The drawback to this is, we have a dozen or so regular half-day clients that currently come from 9-2 or 10-3 (and would essentially be taking up 2 spots in this new system). So this change would affect these clients the most. We've talked with the majority of them, and most of them would be able to make it work without too much trouble. The question is, would it even make a difference to those of you who are trying to book spots when we are already full? So to help us out, can you please take a few seconds and answer the question below...

Thank you very much for your help!

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