I'll preface this review by confirming that the other reviews are spot-on in regards to cleanliness, convenience to E470 and the professional, caring staff!
I'll follow that by stating I had rated CSS as 5-stars on the first two visits however after this stay, will not be returning. And sadly enough it was due to one employee...specifically one of the three owners!
I arrived to pick up my dogs after a five night stay, and a woman (one of the owners) in the lobby overheard the names of my dogs, approached me and stated that having a blanket for each dog took up too much room in the kennel and we only need one next time. She stated that if the dogs have accidents in the kennel or spill water, then she has do to extra laundry. Puzzled at why our previous kennel of five years never mentioned this (in the same size kennel), I asked to see the CSS kennel.
At that point, this partial owner blew my mind on everything that followed. On the way back to my dogs' kennel I was curious about her comment regarding laundering the blankets due to accidents (which my dogs haven't had since their puppy days). It made me wonder how long they were actually spending in the kennel during the day so asked how much play time the dogs had received The response of "we don't track their play time down to the minute" was received. Taken aback, I clarified that I wasn't looking for tracking down to the minute, just an idea of how long. Response was "about two hours or so" which would have sufficed the first time!
Upon arriving to my dogs' kennel I was given a demonstration of how the blankets took up too much space by using a 3'x2' - 1/4" thick blanket which is included with the room rate. Not sure what she was going for when she put the blanket in the middle of the kennel when there was plenty of space in the back of the kennel but that wasn't what prompted this review.
What created this rating was the fact that she proceeded to remove the temporary collars by yanking them apart with her hands. Now, over the past five years I've only seen them removed using some sort of small, plastic, envelope-opener device with a safety guard on them...however it popped off my first dog so didn't think anything of it. The second dog didn't work so smoothly and she struggled to yank it in half, so proceeded to stretch it and pull over my dogs head until he yelped in obvious pain. She retracted, re-stretched and pulled back over, removing the temporary collar.
Now if this was the type of handling my dogs receive when I'm present, I can only imagine what happens when I'm not there! I know it's speculation but perception is reality! On top of that, the lack of professionalism and poor-at-best customer service by one of the owners is appalling!
Just like every pet owner at CSS who's paying good money for a safe, caring facility, I expect that my dogs are taken care of by true animal lovers which I can't say for this individual.
In closing, I should mention that I've talked with the other two owners on different occasions during check-in/out and they both represent the facility in a very professional and caring way...which is why we chose to continue using CSS until the third owner decided to turn a mole hill into a mountain over a blanket.
Unfortunate for them!
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