We had been taking our retriever mix to Pals for Pups since he was about 6 mo. old and everything was fine for about a year. Then we adopted another puppy to keep our dog company, she is a Cane Corso Mastiff. She passed her temperament test without issue and had attended daycare and boarding off and on with our other dog for about 7 more months.
My husband works from home and we have over an acre of fenced yard for our dogs to get exercise, so we really didn't need a daycare service but thought it would be a nice place to take our pals to play with other dogs to get some added socialization and wear off some of their puppy energy.
Then, the owner insisted we start bringing both dogs to daycare 2 days a week. She claimed that since they were large dogs they needed more socialization, despite the fact that we never had any issues brought to our attention by any of her handlers before. We complied for a while but @ $30 per dog/day, this request seemed like expensive requirement that could cost us $3,120/yr for a service that we really didn't need. We also didn't think her request was justified since we do socialize our dogs by other means (e.g., dog parks, doggie play dates, etc.) So, we reverted back to taking them approx. once a week.
This was not acceptable and we received a curt dismissal email from the owner stating that our dogs were not permitted to return because they didn't come often enough. Not a nice way to treat a customer who had been going there for over a year and a half.
Honestly, I don't know how Pals can offer a 12-pass that is good for a year, accept our payment for such plan, and then end up telling us that we need to bring them to daycare twice a week regularly with no justification other than the Owner's opinion that our dogs need more socializing. Our dogs are trained and friendly and neither have had any socialization issues. We think the Owner was either looking for a way to get more $ out of us or get rid of us because we have large breed dogs
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