Posts tagged "kennel"

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the Dalmatian mix he and his wife, Anna, adopted as a puppy in late 2009.

Many readers expressed concern about our post from a couple weeks ago, in which we noted that, despite Pippi's traumatizing experience at the kennel earlier this year -- she got frighteningly sick and lost a bunch of weight -- we decided to bring her there again during a recent vacation. "Please reconsider," pleaded one Doggie Diaries reader. "I don't understand why you would put Pippi back in the same situation that made her so miserable before," said another.

Trust us, we would prefer to board her with a friend or have someone come look in on her at our house, but we just moved to a new town and don't really know anyone here. As for why we returned to the same kennel, well, we couldn't isolate exactly why she had a bad time before, and weren't sure it was their fault -- she'd stayed there previously without incident. Otherwise, we'd had great experiences with that kennel, which is also home to our vet.

A new luxury pet-only resort has just opened its doors across from Walt Disney World's Port Orleans Resort. The Best Friends Pet Care Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., boasts 50,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space (17,000 feet of it air conditioned), 10,000 square feet of covered outdoor play space, and a dog park for the exclusive use of the pets staying there (and their owners when they come visit). This means you can drop off your cat or dog on the way to your hotel and know your pet is staying in comfort and luxury.

Now, while you're getting your thrills on Space Mountain, you can schedule exciting services for your furry friend, like cuddle time and ice cream. Or if you're really looking to pamper your pet, you can book one of the four VIP (very important pet) suites.

Overnight boarding rates for dogs begin at $37/day ($34 if you're a guest at one of the Disney properties) and go up to $76 ($69) for the VIP suite. Cats are a little less pricey, starting at $23/day ($21) for overnight boarding in a two-level condo and going up to $32 ($30) for a four-level condo. The à la carte items vary: 10 minutes of playtime for your pup will run you $8 (but if he can play in a group, you can get 30 minutes for $15), while your kitty can get tuna on Ritz, cookies and milk or an activity toy for $3.

Anna and I got married in October, but we waited until March for our honeymoon, wanting to escape from, what is to us, the most depressing Northeastern winter month. Our two weeks in Panama were spectacular. The only stressful part was worrying about Pippi, back at home. On previous travels, we'd boarded her, but she always seemed to return home a bit stressed out. Based partly on recommendations from our readers, we decided to find a home sitter this time, but that was easier said than done.

The ad we posted at our local Y drew only unsatisfactory applicants, and all of the sitting services we priced were expensive. But at the last moment our next-door neighbor offered to look in on Pippi while we were away. She didn't have much experience with dogs, but thought it would be a good bonding experience for her son, who could help out with the walking.

Having left a veritable book's worth of tips on how to care for our pup and our cat Nora, we set off, a bit anxious not just for Pippi's well being but for our sitter's, who we weren't sure fully grasped the rigorous demands of the job. Not surprisingly, a few days into our trip, the sitter e-mailed to say that Pippi had torn her dog bed to shreds -- information I kept from Anna so she wouldn't stress out.

For three weeks this December, two female black Labrador retrievers named Bella and LaiLa spent the holidays with strangers when a kennel returned them to the wrong families, reports the Seattle Times.

"It was very upsetting," Bella's owner, Stacey Peterson tells Paw Nation. "When we found out the dog we had was not our dog, we were worried because we didn't know where our dog was."

"I was totally shocked," LaiLa's owner, Anne Galasso, tells Paw Nation. "It's like picking up the wrong kid from day care."

But neither Peterson nor Galasso personally picked up their dogs from PetSmart PetsHotel in Issaqua, Wash., where Bella had been boarded and LaiLa had spent one day in doggy daycamp in early December. "If we would have been there to pick her up, I like to think it might have been different," says Peterson. Bella was picked up by Peterson's parents, and Galasso's niece retrieved LaiLa.

That's when the adventure really began for LaiLa. Peterson's parents brought her to Canada and boarded her in a kennel near their home. When Peterson and her husband returned from Europe on December 23 and were reunited with the dog they assumed was Bella, they knew immediately something was different. "Her ears were sitting differently, she walked differently and acted differently," Peterson recalls. "We were trying to understand why she seemed so different, but we never imagined it was because she wasn't our dog." They thought perhaps Bella was angry at them for being gone for 17 days.

Back in February, a Bengal tiger named Sheena was found in a Missouri puppy mill. She weighed around 175 pounds (she should have been closer to 400) and was surviving in a small pen littered with feces, urine, and dog corpses. A small amount of dog food and a couple of possums were tossed into the cage as well.

Among Sheena's health problems were boils on her paws and tongue, unexplained wounds, poor posture due in some part to the fact that she was declawed, along with vision problems. When first brought to the National Tiger Sanctuary near Bloomsdale, Missouri, she was afraid to go outside. She was also eating 25 pounds of food a day and was very aggressive when eating.

Five months later, Sheena's a new tiger. For the first time in her nine years Sheena is experiencing life among other tigers. Her posture and vision issues are improving, and she's put on weight, now eating a healthy 7 lbs a day. Formerly afraid of humans, she now runs up to see her favorite people and rubs on the fence for attention. Naturally, Sheena has become the sanctuary's star attraction.

If you're in Missouri you can visit Sheena and her other sanctuary playmates. If you're not, consider "adopting" one of the sanctuary's many big cats.