Jennifer's Joyous Journal

Yesterday, Stepan and I checked

Yesterday, Stepan and I checked out a couple of kennels. The first was Triple Crown. It is reportedly the premier kennel in the US....reported by them anyway. Their facilities are very nice; very clean. They have six buildings for kenneling dogs. Homer would have his own "room" - basically a cage with a concrete floor - with access to his own dog run. The rooms are cleaned 3x a day; at night, they put in fluffy warm bedding. The kennel buildings are climate controlled. The service that we're really excited about is the training they do while Homer stays there. During the week, a trainer will take him out 3x a day and work with him on obedience commands. They also have a play area that they call the Beach Club where Homer could play for 20-30 minutes a day. I wasn't sure that I liked the place - the idea of Homer staying in a cage all day while I was traipsing around the jungle was depressing. However, we put Homer in a holding area which was very similar to the kennels while we were touring the facilities....when we came back to get him, he looked fine. He was just laying down and it didn't seem to bother him that we left him there.

The other kennel we toured was Dog Boys. They don't offer the training and their facilites aren't as nice - their kennels seemed a lot smaller. The one thing that's great about this kennel is the play groups. At Triple Crown, Homer would be completely alone except for when he was in training. At Dog Boy's, during the day, he would be put in a play group with about 12 other dogs that match his temperment...since playing with other dogs is about his favorite thing in the whole wide world to do, this kennel would probably be his kennel of choice - if he could voice an opinion.

For the Brazil trip, we'll take him to Triple Crown. If we ever need a shorter term kennel, we'll take him to Dog Boy's.