Warning to dog owners

We just had a very bad experience this weekend.

We had to go to a wedding on Saturday, and we were staying overnight so for the first time had to kennel our dogs. Now I wasn't keen on this to begin with, and tried every way to convince the wife to just let me come home, or even better stay home, but as it was one of her best friends I had to knuckle under in the interests of my own marital harmony.

I won't name the kennels we chose, suffice to say they are the ones on the Porirua side of the Heywoods hill, whose name rhymes with grudgeford but begins with a "J". I had a bad feeling as soon as we drove through the gate, as all we could hear was dogs howling. The facilities did not appear great, just a series of chainlink enclosures with a dog standing at the end of each one crying. I was not happy with this, but we had little choice but to go through with it. We entered reception, and were met by one of the rudest most unfriendly women I have ever seen. we walked over to the car (the dogs were still belted in) and she took one look at my little girl and said "that's a pitbull, we don't take pitbulls"
"no, she's a staffordshire" I replied
"Well she looks like a pitbull to me, and I know what I'm talking about"
"Strange" said I, "every vet we've taken her to thought she was a staffordshire. Where did you get your veterinarian degree?"
The lack of response to this question led me to believe she was not in fact qualified to anything beyond sitting behind a desk taking people’s money (and not particularly well suited to that)

Now she goes to leash my dog, who is still sitting down, strapped into the car seat. Anyone who knows anything about dogs will tell you never to approach a strange dog from above, and certainly do not lunge at a dog that is clearly nervous. Since she obviously didn't know anything about dogs she did exactly that, at which point my dog recoiled away from her.

"She just tried to bite me!" says dumb bitch. Getting severely pissed off now I explained that if she had tried to bite she would have been successful, and recoiling away from an intruder is hardly the same as trying to bite.

So now she has both of my dogs on leashes, and as she walks away starts muttering "well we'll try, but we probably won't be able to keep her". Totally confused, I looked at my wife who looked equally confused. Was she going to look after my dog or not? All we had to go on was this distant mumbling about how they wouldn't keep the dog, as the dog was being led away.

This led to a pretty stressful evening, we couldn't enjoy the wedding as we didn't know whether or not we were going to get a phone call at anytime to come and take the dogs back.

We went to pick them up the next morning, and the situation was just as bad. Every dog there was howling and crying, including mine.

back into reception, where Mrs StoneFace was working again.

"any problems?"
"Well, Bess was a little nervous so we probably won't take her again"
"Probably? What the feck do you mean "probably"? You can't take someone's money and then decide you aren't going to provide the service you offer. If you know there a types of dog you don't want , you should really tell your prospective customers that before hand, not when they turn up to drop their dogs off on their way out somewhere. If you had said there might be a problem we could have easily brought the dogs along before the day, you could have had a look at them, and decided then and there whether you would take them, and we could have made different arrangements. And you need not worry; there is absolutely no way we will ever be bringing our dogs back here again" In response to this she said.... absolutely nothing, just carried on what she was doing and totally ignored me. By now my wife must have noticed the steam that was coming out of my ears, so she led my outside.

We had asked for our two dogs to be placed in one run, which they were, but were now standing in line with all the others crying their hearts out. The look one of the dogs' faces was a picture; if he could have spoken he would have said "you fecker! Don’t you dare try and bring me here again!" There was a big pool of piss in the run from one or both of the dogs, and they both cried all the way home, squatting the instant we got out of the car. They hadn't been exercised at all, and I don't think they had even been let out to go to the toilet.

If it wasn't for the fact that I know dogs do not dwell on the past the way we do, I would have felt incredibly guilty. As it was I was just in a case of amused shock for the rest of the day, still finding it unbelievable that someone who clearly knows so little about dogs could be running a kennel, and feeling so sorry for putting my babies and best mates through that.

Later that afternoon we decided to pay a visit to "smart dogs" in churton park to see if they were any better.

We turned up unannounced, and when they were actually closed, but the owner was more than happy to show us around and answer questions. It was immediately obvious that he knew what he was talking about, and had an excellent rapport with the dogs. At first we thought they had no dogs staying, as there was no barking whatsoever, but it turned out they had about three dozen guests who were just quietly lying down after a run around their massive exercise area. What amazed me most was when the dogs did start barking, the owner just calmly told them to shut up and they all did. Instantly.

The facilities were fantastic, spotlessly clean, no smell, (apart from in the office where the owner's own dogs spends his days) well organised, with three separate exercise areas for dogs of different sizes, and isolation areas for problem or sick dogs. They even had a spa! We'll be going there next time.

In case you were wondering, this what my vicious pitbull looks like;