Beagle Buddy

It is Bailey's first day today and so far so good.

She has managed to make a new friend already. (As usual, this has not proven to be a challenge for a beagle.)

When Bailey laid eyes on Cookie, it was love at first sight and non-stop fun.

Copper

Copper came for the first time last week but I forgot the camera at home so I missed out on taking pictures of him. So this week I was sure to try and get a few.

This kid has tonnes of energy to burn. He grabs a toy, does 30 laps, spots a different toy, scoops it up and does 30 more laps. Then spots a dog that looks like fun and starts a game of wrestling. Then if a toy catches his eye, he scoops it up to start zooming again.

I swear he didn't sit still the whole time he was here. Not even for a second.

Newbies

Monday is our new dog day and yesterday was a busy one.

Sophie is our first little papillon at daycare! She is cute and wild and you just gotta love those ears.

Trixie is a bichon/shih tzu who looks so much like Max, we had to look at their birthdays to see if they were litter mates - they weren't.

Carson is a yorkie/schnauzer who is quite the brave little guy. He was wrestling up a storm in no time but when I held up the camera all action stopped, his ears drooped and he looked unhappy.

I had to use the zoom lens just to get a picture with his cute little ears up.

Abby is your typical wild and crazy lab.

Don't let this cute look fool you, she is a handful!

Official Puppy Playmate

We have made Alfie our official puppy playmate.

He is so gentle and sweet with the puppies and just has a great time letting them crawl all over him.

Today he was busy entertaining Abby. More on her in another post.

He does occasionally take a break, but it never lasts long.

Strawberry Goodness

For what ever reason, Amanda's dogs didn't enjoy the Strawberry from Planet Dog so she brought it to the daycare. The dogs here think her dogs are nuts, because they love it!

I was getting the stare down whenever I was holding it.

Some dogs were pretty pleased with themselves when they got it.

Some never wanted to let it go.

And some did some pretty spectacular feats to claim it.

A Patch of Light

It is funny to watch the dogs gather in the patch of light that comes through an open door. Sometimes we can have up to 6 dogs sunning themselves in the same small patch.

Some of them just can't resist wrestling with their resting neighbor.

Halloween Party

We had a great time on Saturday at the party! Be ready for lots of photos - I couldn't narrow them down any more than this!

The best part of the party is seeing all the dogs dressed up. The costumes are so cute and you just have to laugh at how goofy they all look.

We had a costume contest to start and then we did some games - musical mats and wiener dunking. Then it was time for the dogs to lose the costumes and run around and have a good time.

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...

Online Surveys & Market Research

Thank you very much for your help!

Happy Halloween

Our Halloween wish came true. We got a pumpkin carved by Normin and Pele's Dad.

Isn't it absolutely stunning?

Click to see last year's version.