Your Dog Needs Friends

Having a dog as a pet is one of life’s greatest gifts.

Having your dog stay at home with you 24/7 is certainly a good thing but there are also some risks that many people aren't aware of such as having your dog become lonely and get depressed. Without learning to properly interact with other canines dogs can be negatively under-socialized. This issue is often fixed by getting your dog a friend, but if you really don't have the space for another pup at home then you might want to look into daycare to help your dog meet its need for doggy friends.

How do you figure out if your dog is a good fit for daycare?

Okay, how do you figure out if your dog is a good fit for anything? Whether it's a new toy, new friend, or new human everyone needs to know the basics. If you want your dog to enjoy daycare, you'll want to make sure he's a good fit for the environment.

Here are seven questions to ask yourself:

1. Is my dog at least six months old? Riverview Kennels requires dogs to be at least six months old in order to attend. There are many developmental functions a dog needs to have in order before coming to a dog daycare. The six-month mark is a great starting point.

2. Is my dog physically healthy? We require all dogs to be up-to-date on three vaccinations-bordetella, DHLPP, & rabies. If you have all of those requirements met it’s still important that your pup isn't sick or doesn’t have any medical conditions that could spread among other animals or humans in the facility. You can read more about our vaccination protocols, here.

3. Is my dog social? Daycare is meant to be fun for both the dogs and their owners, and if your pup doesn't enjoy being around other people and animals, then he probably won't have fun at daycare either. If a dog hasn't learned how to behave well around other dogs, we first recommend training or behavior modification classes prior to enrollment. While daycare is a good space for dogs to hone their socialization skills it is not a good place for them to start from scratch.

4. Does my dog guard items or people? Resource guarding, whether it's an object or a person, can be a difficult behavior to incorporate into daycare social groups. We don't use balls or toys in most of our daycare groups to avoid resource-guarding problems. However, some dogs can resource guard the strangest things. This would be an important bit of information to communicate during our initial Dog Evaluation. You can read more about our Dog Evaluation, here.

5. Does my dog have basic obedience training? While this isn't a requirement, it's a huge benefit to your dog and our team if your dog knows some basic commands, like ‘sit’ and ‘stay’. More advanced commands like ‘come’ and ‘down’ are also great skills to develop.

6. Has my dog been spayed or neutered? We are moving toward being a fully spayed and neutered facility. This allows us greater freedom in constructing play groups and leads to fewer problems amongst the daycare dogs.

7. Has my dog had a Meet & Greet at Riverview Kennels? We require all dogs (daycare or boarding) to go through an evaluation process we call a Meet & Greet. This allows us to learn about your dog from you and by watching it engage with other well-adapted dogs. We grade dogs in the evaluation and assign them a color. You can read more about our Meet & Greet, here.

So, Is Your Dog Ready for its Meet & Greet?

Going through this list may seem like a lot of work, but it's really the only way to know if your dog is a good fit for daycare and boarding. We require this information from every dog and its owner before we ever start letting them play with our pack of dogs. These standards empower us to create a safe environment for all of the dogs under our care and an enjoyable atmosphere for our team.

There are many benefits to putting your dog in daycare (we wrote a blog about it, here), including finding canine friends, relieving stress, providing new socialization, breaking up boredom and loneliness, providing your dog with a stimulating and active lifestyle, and even improving their obedience. If you want to find out more about our daycare program or are ready to schedule your Meet & Greet, call us at (541) 347-4689 or send an email to office@riverviewkennels.com. You can also find more information on our website under the Services tab.