Things you should know about doggie day care

In recent years there has been sort of an explosion in dogie day care and up-scale overnight stay facilities for both dogs and cats. With prices running the gambit, and facilities offering inside play area with padded floors,  outside play area with grass, concrete, AstroTurf,  one on one walks and play times, training, and who know what else. In my area, day care (where you drop your dog off in the morning and pick it up in the evening) starts at $5 and goes up to $35 per day which is cheep based on national averages.

Most of these facilities appear to be clean and well kept, but there are some things you as a pet owner should know about pet facility management. They all seem to:

1. be concerned about their facility looking clean.
2. be very concerned about their facility not smelling like urine or feces.
3. be concerned about bacteria accumulation and how to control it.
4. be concerned about grassy or AstroTurf areas and the build up of waste and dirt

Theses and other concerns are all valid and require serious consideration by you as a pet owner and the facility manager.  However, when questioned about these issues, you will almost always find the facilities personal have been carefully coached on exactly what to say and what not to say and what not to respond to at all.

An an example, when asked what procedure is used to sanitize the play areas you will get an answer that almost always includes chlorine bleach and detergent. If these products are used while the animals are present, you should consider the following. Decomposing (evaporating)  urine releases small amounts of ammonia gas. You may remember your high school science teacher mentioning that when you mix even small amounts of ammonia and chlorine bleach pure chlorine gas (which is deadly poison in even very small quantities) is released. The facilities workers can react to the odor of chlorine gas after once burning their nose and throat, but the dogs and cats are not quite so lucky.

The bottom line is that bleach is a really poor disinfectant (though the pure chlorine gas is pretty good except for the poison aspect). Detergent will dissolve the dirt, feces, and decomposing urine so that it can be easily rinsed away except for the urine that has soaked into the concrete, padding and AstroTurf.

So, how can you protect your pet from the unseen dangers at these facilities. It is pretty tough. Looking for a nice home care business where there are only 4 to 10 dogs is probably your best bet, but you need to monitor their performance very closely as well.

You might want to recomment that you daycare manager check this web site
to find products that will not endanger their employees or charges.

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