08/03/2026
Update! I had such an amazing response to this. As many of you know, I have a great faith in my heavenly father and jesus christ. I believe that when we ask in faith, he delivers. It might not be in the form we were expecting or exactly what we wanted, but he delivers. There were a couple of gems that came out of this. First, I don't want to change my business. But I do want to change some aspects of it. Dogs that get diarrhea probably are not the problem. They are simply responding to stress in the building. Dogs who are excessively barking, are generally probably the cause. This was pointed out to me, and after much thought, I concluded that that was indeed the case. I had not thought about it in that way. So we will be addressing those dogs more than we have in the past. And if we find that a dog is barking excessively at inappropriate things, we will likely ask them to stay in their rooms a little bit more to settle. If that does not work, then we will likely ask them to not return. I don't wanna charge my clients because it's s not likely the dog's problem, but rather an environmental issue. That's why I struggle with this, because I do care deeply, and I want the best!
Now stay tuned, because there's something bigger in the works!
So here's the reality. I charge $50 a night which is less than everyone that has a setup like me. But I pay for this setup. This weekend has been particularly rough. I had fourteen dogs in. A full house is sixteen. On three separate mornings, I came in to diarrhea. On the floor, on the bed, on the walls. One different dog each morning. This always causes me to pause, because I don't get paid for this kind of thing. This isn't enough money to have to deal with this. The owners are always apologetic. I even emailed all my clients at one time that I would add charges when this kind of mess happened. In each of these cases I did not. And in each case i've hoped that the owner would simply add some extra knowing how much extra work their dog had caused me. Between the paper towels to cleanup the wet mass, the chemicals to sanitize and the laundry. It does cost me. I didn't give the dogs anything different than every other dog gets, which is their normal food and freeze dried liver when they go in their rooms. That's it.
I try to be a nice person. I try to be generous and kind. But to be honest, i'm about to rip out all of the rooms and rip out the floors, put in a septice system. Add drains in rhe room and put cages in, because it would be a whole lot easier. I'll go to a model like happy tails or white river corral. You're either in your run, or you're outside in a play area. I know many of you choose this because it feels like home. But honestly, if you had to clean this up in your home regularly, you would be rethinking things as well. I didn't put the picture here but go check the comments because it's there.
