That is the question…
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of financial ruin,
Or take arms against a sea of barks and bites…

(Thanks for sticking around while I get a little pseudo-Shakespeare out of my system. I should be good now for the next 5 years.)

The wife and I are going on vacation to see family in Boston at the end of next week. We thought about bringing Jacoby, our dog, but transferring a dog 3,000 miles for a week is tough. We’d be limited to certain hotels and certain activities where dogs are acceptable. We looked into boarding him and found that Doggyville was the place for us. They partnered with the rescue that paired us with Jacoby and the reviews are awesome. (Oh and Chris, if you are reading this, can we get a discount on Jake’s boarding next week ;-) ).

Doggyville doesn’t want to board Cerberus, so they require a 10-15 minute introduction. It turns out that my work is 5 minutes away from Doggyville. My option was either drive a half hour with Jacoby for the introduction, bring Jacoby home, and drive back to work (ugh…) or pay the $35 for a day of dog care. I opted for the later.

I realize I left an important part of the story out. From 5:30-8:30 (both AM and PM), Jacoby is the most rambunctious dog ever. He’ll wake us up with gentle pawing. If you ignore that he’ll “mouth” your hand, foot, whatever is convenient. I say “mouth” because he doesn’t crunch down as if he’s biting. He just wants to get your attention… all your attention. The only real cure we’ve seen for rambunctious dog is walking and trips to the dog park. Even those are more temporary treatments than cures.

However, Doggyville is different. I noticed a big change in Jacoby after his Doggyville visit. He got in the car at 6:00PM (the start of his attention-seeking schedule) and crawled to the backseat and just sat down… for the whole ride. We got home and he walked over to my wife’s feet and curled up in a ball at them. She asked if maybe Doggieville gave us the wrong dog back. Jacoby was so well-behaved, I felt like pushing my luck and asking him to fetch my slippers.

This brings up the question I started with… dog day care or no dog day care? If we buy a bulk package we can get the price per day (7AM-7PM) to about $27. If you were to extrapolate that for a month you’d be spending $810 or nearly $10,000 a year. Obviously we wouldn’t do it that much, but it still gets expensive quickly. On the other hand, having a few hours where a puppy isn’t begging for attention is big. It’s also good socialization of Jacoby.

So my wife and I are thinking about a once a week dog day care. Anyone go the dog day care route? Thoughts?