[cuddleparty]

Today I am taking Snoops to have some maintenance grooming - sanitary clip, ears plucked, eyes trimmed. I also inquired about their half day daycare.

Seeing that I am leaving Snoops for some grooming, would I also be responsible for paying a half day daycare fee? After I hung up the phone, I realized groomers usually allow dogs to stay there for extended hours if need be.

This is a groomer I had used for Snoops' very first groom. I haven't had a chance to visit with them since then. So this will be our second visit.

Does paying a daycare fee mean Snoops will get more attention and play time vs. being put in a kennel after his groom as he awaits me to collect him?

I will also ask as I arrive at the groomers, but would be interesting to know ya'lls opinion

 

[AgilityIG]

IMO - if he is just sitting in a grooming kennel waiting for you to pick him up, I would expect that to be part of the grooming charge. However, if he is put in with the other daycare dogs to play and has someone watching and playing with him, I would expect to pay for daycare and grooming (not sure if I'd want my freshly groomed dog slimed by the other dogs though!! :biggrin

 

[WonderPup]

I think it depends on the groomer, I don't know many that charge for keeping the dog between the time it is finished and when it is picked up. I do, but that is because I don't want to keep the dogs all day since there is no safe place to walk them and because I only do two/three at a time I have limited kennel space. Why buy kennels when you only have two dogs comming in. Obviously I have about 10 kennels for owners who are late or dogs who arrive a bit early. I'm not completely a witch lol whats an addition hour or two? However, if I'm keeping your dog all day there is an addition fee, mostly to discourage you from using me as an all day baby sitter since I'm not set up for it. I also notice that for some reason owners who want to leave their dogs all day with me usualy have yappy dogs that don't shut up for five hours ROFL.

For a place that provides daycare though I would assume/hope that they have a seperate area for dogs in daycare. I believe there is a shop here who does it and the dogs are in large pens or kennel runs and get free play time rather than being in a kennel in the grooming area. If you're paying for a half day of daycare I would make sure that you are getting something like this, otherwise I can't see how it would be worth the money at a traditional type grooming establishment. If he's in the same kennel he was in waiting for grooming then why pay extra. Did that make sense?? I'm feeling really crummy and trying not to barf on my laptop so hopefuly my thoughts aren't toooo scattered LoL.

... Actualy now that I think of it how long are you planning to leave him VS how long is he actualy going to be waiting/in process for grooming. A lot of places don't do dogs straight though like I do. They groom them in stages so to speak. Rough three or four dogs in, bath all three dogs, then dry all three dogs or set them up in kennel dryers, and then move on to finishing. In those cases the time it takes to groom snoops start to finish would be longer say three or four hours possibly than the 60-90 minutes it would likely take a groomer to do him straight through. Either way is fine, every groomer has their methods that work for them. The point is if you're half a day of daycare is say 5 hours and he spends three of them in the grooming area or being groomed then where is the value for the day care? Surely it would be no big issue for them to keep him for free (in the grooming area- not in a seperate day care if they have it) for the addition two hours or to charge a reduced fee for just the two hours of daycare? I can see doing something like that for my clients IF I ever owned a facility with a day care/ boarding in it.

 

[Aidan]

We open at 7am and close at 7pm people can leave their dogs with us all day if they want..but after I leave at 7 if the dog is still here then i have to take it outside to use the bathroom and provide food/water before leaving and they can pick up the dog the next day with a $30 boarding fee attached.

It's the company policy not mine.. i personally dont like dogs having to be kenneled all day. If a dog is friendly and pretty social and they have to be there all day ill sometimes let the dog out for a half hour to chill out by my table while im grooming, especially some of the regulars and nobody has ever seemed to mind.

 

[Harley_chik]

I think everyone made good points. I agree that it depends on where he is kept, how much time he's there for daycare compared to the grooming time, what the groomer would have to do extra, etc. My SIL is a groomer in Ruston, LA (she's not that far from you Aidan!). She used to groom at a petshop in Monroe and people would leave their dogs all day w/o making arrangements. She could be through grooming at 3 but have to stay til 5 or 6 w/o pay b/c someone didn't pick up their dog. I told her several times she should charge a "daycare" fee, but she wasn't the boss. (She's much happier where she is now!)

 

[mandi]

That is too funny-that is exactly what my dogs do-after they are all brushed, cleaned, and perfumed-they go play and the bigger ones slime the smaller ones-yuck! Plus they get tangled hair faster...having one was so much easier!

 

[cuddleparty]

well.. this is how it turned out..

I got to the doggy spa and dropped Snoops off. I let them know the few services that I needed for him.. just maintenance stuff. They said it would take about 30 minutes. I told them that I had a few errands to run, and if I left him for a few hours (4-5 hours) would I need to pay a half day daycare fee?
They told me it's fine - they would leave him upstairs in grooming to play because they didn't think it would be wise to introduce a new dog to the daycare bunch so late in the day. They wouldn't be charging me any additional for keeping him up in grooming. WOW! TOTALLY COOL OF THEM!!!
When I picked Snoops up, they said he was great. He played all day with a Yorkie up in grooming and they had a ball. Seems everyone had fun together and they really enjoyed Snoops. The other great thing - when he came downstairs he was perfectly calm. I've never seem him like this after grooming! He wasn't shaking (except his wagging tail) and he was just so happy. A GREAT experience all around!

They only charged me $30 for all the services (ears cleaned/plucked, nails cut, pad fur trimmed, sanitary trim, eyes/face trimmed) I gave them a $10 tip.. I hope that was enough.

This was the very 1st place Snoops had gone to for his very 1st groom. They did an excellent job then, and an amazing job again this time. Maybe I'm just going to need to bring Snoops back to Toronto each time he needs grooming, seeing as I can't find a groomer in Dallas...