Dropping Off at Playcare

Photo from At Play with Sparky

Children have daycare and preschool, and so do dogs. I have to say that before I had a dog I thought the doggy daycare thing was a little bit silly. Not as silly as some of the outfits that people put on their pets, but still silly.

But when we got Charlie we realized that there is a great "playcare" facility less than 2 miles from home. I checked out their website and found out that they also do crateless boarding. With my husband going to work and school this year and me having a long commute and changing schedule, I thought it might be a good idea to check it out.

We went by for a tour and dropped Charlie off for a 2-hour free trial. We haven't taken him there for real yet, but it's nice to know we have the option when the need arises.

So here are some ways that doggy playcare is like daycare, beyond the obvious:

• They chose the same finger-paintingesque blog background as we did.
• They take photos of your pup and post them in their Facebook album. (So, real parents might have a problem with this... but lots of preschools do take pictures to share with the families.)
• The play yard features those same colorful plastic cubes with slides--see photo.
• Before you drop off your dog, you have a fill out a lot of paper work with emergency contacts and vaccination records.
• When you go to pick up your dog, the nice person at the front desk hits the button on the intercom and says, "Please send down Charlie, his mom is here." No, really.

Dog Park is to Playground

About three months ago, as my husband and I were just about to adopt the second love of our lives, Katie and I were having one of many (many) dog chats. At one point in this talk, she wrote:

"I think the dog park is just a preview of playgrounds with children (i.e., My dog was misbehaving, so I am—three days later—still mad at the guy who called him out on it.) My dog/child is incapable of doing anything wrong. Duh."

This got me thinking about our dogs/children and all the other ways we live on both sides of that slash mark. Welcome our chronicle about living with a dog/child and all the slightly ridiculous ways that we might treat them a little too much like family.