Every morning, working Knoxvillians drop off their tiny loved ones at daycare—doggie daycare.
by Paige M. Travis
The alarm clock wakes you into consciousness. It's another work day. You perform the familiar routine of feeding, dressing, and brushing before running out the door to make the daily commute. On the way to work, you stop by the daycare center. Inside the front door, the bright yellow walls and black and white tiled floor welcome you and your hyper youngster, who is already clamoring to join his friends in the next room. After a big, sloppy kiss you say "Have fun today" and hang your baby's leash beside the door and leave him to chase balls, take naps, and get rowdy with other dogs for hours on end.
If you don't get it, maybe you're a cat person.
Welcome to the world of dog daycare, a place where owners, or parents if you prefer, can leave their beloved pets for an entire day or just a few hours while they work or run errands. Never heard of daycare for dogs? The business concept is about 10 years old; it started in larger cities across this country and Canada and just recently found its way to Knoxville. The concept is quite similar to daycare for human children: While Mom and/or Dad are at work, Skip and Patches play with their friends Daisy and Noodle, take walks, get treats, and nap on the couch between sessions of destroying chew toys and barking at everyone in sight.
The idea is catching on, especially with those already predisposed to all things canine. Dog people, more than other pet owners perhaps, understand the urge to treat their pets like children. And dogs—motivated by love, devotion, and the general desire to please—allow this to happen. People dress their dogs in sweaters, drive them around strapped in special seat belts, and feed them directly from the dinner table. And dogs eat it up, figuratively and, sometimes, literally. Do dog owners love their pets more than the owners of other animals? Well, not exactly, but have you ever heard of a daycare for cats or rabbits or pot-bellied pigs?
Knoxville was introduced to the dog daycare concept when Mari Williamson opened K-9 to 5 Dog Daycare Center in November 1999. She's gained a loyal following as the city's dog owners have slowly warmed to the idea.
"I have a hyper dog," says Michelle Meyer of her 2-year-old mixed breed, Jonah. "He's not one to be left alone, and I think it's crude to keep him caged." To keep him from destroying her apartment, she takes him to daycare. "It's good exercise for him and teaches him to get along with other dogs, which he's not used to."
Meyer says people have laughed when she tells them her dog goes to daycare: "I just say, 'Hey, you take your kids to daycare, this is my baby.' He's a member of the family."
"We don't call it 'daycare,' we call it 'playschool,'" insists one local dog owner who preferred to remain anonymous. "Benjamin (her Bichon) goes not because I work; he goes be-cause he's a sociable little dog. He doesn't have anybody to play with because he lives with two cats."
Since such a small percentage of Knoxvillians live in the urban center, it's safe to say that most area dog owners live in houses with yards or at least in fairly suburban areas with places to walk their pets. In other words, Knoxville is no Big City, where dog-walking is a viable industry. But as fewer people own their own homes or even small patches of land, dogs are confined to inside spaces, where they may get anxious and start looking for something to chew. As dog daycare entrepreneurs across the country see it, their business offers homebound dogs a home away from home and parents a balm for their guilty conscience.
Williamson serves the parents/owners, but it's the dogs she spends the day with, watching their behavior, listening to their barks, participating in their play. "The dogs love to come here," Williamson says. "It's really funny to see them drag their owners across the tile to get back [to the play area]. They just love to play."
The daycare center is a different setting than Williamson was used to after several years of working as a media buyer in the traditional office. Originally from Michigan, Williamson arrived in Knoxville three years ago and began thinking about opening her own business. Having been a lifelong dog lover and a volunteer at the Humane Society, she thought about a dog-focused business, but what exactly? Inspiration came from her own experience as the working parent of a stay-at-home dog named Oscar. Williamson was living off Middlebrook Pike and working out on Merchants Road.
"I would try to come home on my lunch hour," she says, but the drive was eating up her time and wearing her out. When she got home at night, Oscar, weary of sniffing around the apartment and sleeping on the couch, would be ready for some serious playtime when his owner was ready to wind down. "I felt horrible," she says.
Williamson realized that if other pet owners were wracked with guilt and concern over their pets' lonely days and hyperactive nights, there must be a need for a dog daycare in the Knoxville area.
With help from an old friend, Al Gibb, and a Canadian entrepreneur named Brad Pattison, who runs the Yuppy Puppy Dog Daycare in Vancouver and sells business packages for dog daycares, K-9 to 5 was up and running in six months' time.
"It's all evolved," she says. "When I first started, I thought I knew exactly what I was going to be doing every day. And it's just so different. It seems like things change on a daily basis."
The dogs have taught Williamson a thing or two, like how many paper towels she needs to keep in stock (lots), which treats are favorites and which squeaky toys last longer than 15 minutes (not many). And the needs of dog owners have inspired the addition of an at-home pet sitting service, nightly obedience school classes conducted by Lisa Styles and the recent addition of a mobile groomer who visits K-9 to 5 every two weeks and grooms dogs during their stay.
One Knoxvillian sold on the daycare experience is Elsie Sampson, a young Samoyan whose mom is Nell Sampson, president of Cherokee Distributing, Inc. Elsie used to accompany Nell to work until K-9 to 5 opened. As Cherokee's unofficial mascot, Elsie got plenty of attention from the employees, but she didn't get to hang out with other dogs. Daycare has expanded her social horizons.
"I'm crazy about my dog," Nell Sampson says. "She's like a little kid to me. Elsie loves to be around other dogs, and of course, by taking her to work, she wasn't used to being by herself."
"She's crazy about that place," Sampson says of K-9 to 5. "She's just exhausted when she gets home; she's just worn out."
Despite their adorable qualities, dogs are still just pets. Or are they? Williamson says the majority of the dogs she keeps are like children to their owners, hence the tendency to call them parents and kids. And a good parent would never dream of leaving their child at home alone, especially when that kid might get bored and start chewing up the furniture.
"I think daycare creates a better, more well-rounded dog," Williamson says. "They learn how to be more social with humans. They're not just around their parents. They're around other owners who are coming to pick up other dogs, and myself and Lisa and Melinda (Howard, her assistant). So they're around different people. And obviously other dogs."
If the emergence of dog daycare centers is a trend, Williamson and Yuppy Puppy founder Brad Pattison agree it's one that's here to stay. Along with the entire pet industry, the dog daycare business continues to grow, Pattison says.
"Pet owners are now getting educated as to what is available for their dogs," Pattison says. He points out that people are working longer hours, pursuing active social lives, and trying out dog ownership before having children—all aspects of modern life that makes dog daycare a viable business venture. But the root of the business is still all about playtime.
"There are 17 tennis balls back there, and they all want the same one," Williamson says with a laugh. After more than six months in business, she can identify each dog by his or her bark ("That's kind of scary"), and she sheepishly admits to sometimes knowing a dog's name better than his owner's.
"It's so cool to come here," she says, "I'm surrounded by unconditional love."
That's the heart of dog daycare and the billions of pet products and services on the market: in our complicated ways, we humans just want to return the kind of unadulterated love and devotion that our pets give to us, be it in the form of endless sessions of fetch, wrestling matches, fancy treats, dog daycare, or massages. Dogs are the children who never grow up, and we want to spoil them as long as we can.
June 29, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 26
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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