With the changing demographics of the neighbourhood there are also a lot of new canine residents. And, like the restaurants popping up to serve the humans who’ve moved in, there are businesses catering to those humans’ best friends, the dogs. Recently we had the opening of the Dog Bowl on Dundas north of Trinity Bellwoods. Most recently at 45 Ossington we saw the launch of Unleashed in the City, which provides a range of doggy services including dog walking, dog ‘playcare’ as well as overnight stays – for those who need their pooch looked after while they are out of town.
With Trinity Bellwoods close by, there’s a great place for Unleashed to take the furry guest for company and exercise. Unleashed goes farther than that, taking their clients on longer hikes to farther reaches of the city, including the beaches, where they can make friends with other dogs and explore new territories.
You can follow them and their adventures in the business on facebook and twitter
Our
dog went to Unleashed for about 11 months, and we just recently pulled him out
of there, after we found out that one of the employees, Max, yelled at our
dog. He brought him home one day and
when our dog jumped on our couch, Max decided it would be appropriate to yell
at our poor dog. We were pretty upset
about it, and when I spoke to the office manager about it, at first, she was
very apologetic and said she would discuss it with Max. But when Max was too cowardly to admit what
he did, even though we had a witness who was able to provide a lot of
specifics, we spoke to the owner Kate.
Instead of apologizing for what happened, she defended what Max did and
implied that our witness “misheard”, and tried to guilt us into keeping our dog there by telling us
how much they had gone out of their way to help our dog, etc., which we never found to be true. They claim to have a lot of experience
working with rescue dogs who have anxiety issues (which was our dog’s
situation), but the truth is that Kate is a self-taught so-called dog expert,
and is not good at reading dog body language and understanding what dogs
need. A lot of dog daycares that are run
by experienced professionals encourage owners to use positive reinforcement –
Kate and her team use leash corrections, pin dogs down, and I have even seen
her use a spray bottle on a bloodhound who goes there regularly. If you believe in positive reinforcement, or
have a rescue dog that needs a lot of patience and understanding, Unleashed is
a dangerous place for you to leave your dog.
Max was completely inappropriate with our dog and we couldn’t take any
chances that something else would happen in the future, especially since they did not feel that they were out of line.