06/13/2026
June marks our business's 4th anniversary. It's difficult to accurately express just how thankful we are for the support all of you have shown, not just for our business but for us personally. We have made so many friends and will never forget your kindness and love.
As Tom & I reminisced today we felt a great sense of pride about how far the business has come and how much we've grown and learned.
Our daycare started as an idea to raise money for food and vet bills for our rescue, the Goldendale Shepherd Sanctuary. Now it has blossomed into a thriving small business that helps support and benefits the sanctuary dogs, our community, local schools, ourselves and of course our guest dogs and their parents.
We began doing daycare with 1 play yard and boarding in the bedroom of our tiny house. We added a dog cabin that has since become a private suite. We bought 5 acres next to us and expanded our play yards and we now have a beautiful facility with kennels that include luxury accommodations like heated floors, state of the art air filtration, air conditioning, water fountains, comfy cots and more.
Our rescue and our business's success was built on the philosophy of treating rescue and guest dogs like our own. We are proud that as we have grown we have kept true to that core value. Guest dogs get spoiled just like our own. When we get something new or upgrade something for our own dogs, we get enough for everybody. We eat, sleep and play with our guests just like we do our own dogs.
Over the last 4 years we have formed wonderful collaborative relationships, gained an immense amount of experience in our craft, continued our education as trainers, grew our knowledge of our industry and have greatly improved and upgraded our infrastructure and equipment.
Our efforts have helped us earn a great reputation,
5 star ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ reviews across several platforms, 5 Best of The Gorge awards and most importantly the trust of you and your pets. We hope we have done enough to earn your votes and another Best of the Gorge award in 2026.
Now we look ahead to year #5. There are still many exciting improvements coming. As we continue to learn, improve and adapt there will be a few changes to some of our offerings, policies, prices and schedule.
As much as we love this job in order to accomplish everything we have without staff and we have worn many hats and have worked tirelessly, 14+ hours a day, 7 days a week, holidays & weekends. This year we are going to concentrate our focus more on the daycare & boarding part of the business as well as making a little more time for ourselves. In order to do that we will be decreasing the amount of dogs we take on which will allow us to continue giving premium care to every guest while still taking some time to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
We will be reducing our off-site training appointments as well as grooming days/appointments. We will still be offering exit baths, nail trims and ear cleanings for our in-house boarding guests.
Of all the changes, price changes are not the ones people look forward to the most, but we had not raised our base rate for boarding since we opened and our base daycare rate had only increased $5 in 4 years despite us heavily investing in the business. We realized this was not the wisest or most sustainable business decision. 😁
Our new daycare rate is $40 and it is a great value. In addition to having the largest play areas around our daycare is not staffed by employees, instead it is supervised by us personally. As experienced trainers that specialize in socialization you cannot find more qualified oversight for play sessions.
We are still committed to giving every guest a premium experience without up charging for it so we have not followed the industry standard of charging extra for daycare, walks, playtime, attention etc. These services are still included in our new boarding rate of $70 per night which is well below what boarding & daycare costs at other licenced, insured and reputable facilities in the area despite ours being a premier quality, high-end, personalized service.
We are in the process of having our scheduling portal
and website (links below) updated to reflect the changes. It's a work in progress so if you have any questions feel free to reach out during business hours, messages received after hours will be answered during business hours. Contact info is on our website. Facebook Messenger is hit and miss so it is not the most reliable way to contact us.
https://pawpartner.com/pz/book?p=3841785
Elysesdoggydaycare.com
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