Cutting Back on Doggie Daycare

At $580 for 20 days each, doggie daycare tends to get expensive at times. Sure, the girls are so tired when they get home that all they want to do is eat and fall sleep but, that is a nice chunk of change for the privilege of going to play with other dogs. Although it comes in handy when we have to leave the girls with family members while on vacation, it is too expensive to do regularly. They used to enjoy this privilege up to 3 times in a week and have now been cut down to once a week.

In order to get the best rate, you need to buy the days in packs of 20 days. The purchase clause on this package is that all 20 days must be used up within 6 months of purchase. As we worked it out, at one day a week, that gives us 6 months of doggie daycare! Sure, that still comes out to over $1,000 a year on our Labs getting pampered and people calling us Yuppies but it is well worth it when you think about the amount of socialization that is done at the daycare.

That is not to say that we just went from 3 days a week down to one. Actually, we had to slowly wean them down to 1 day a week or Dakota would go crazy. As I have stated before, dogs love to stick to schedules and they tend to get out of sorts when the schedule is thrown out the window. For us, Dakota knew exactly what days she was going to daycare and would literally hound us all day if she didn't get to go. The weaning process was a little difficult because she was still a little annoyed that she didn't get to go but we were able to supplement her dog socialization with weekend trips to the dog park. Both Dakota and Cheyenne love it and it allows them to get a lot more exercise then being in a small doggie daycare. Needless to say, in the end, the girls get socialized better, they get more exercise, we save more money, and we get the exercise we need in order to keep up with our Labrador Retrievers on a daily basis.