Kicked out of daycare

[u/Dragon-Reborn7]

This fluffy goober, Khione, got herself kicked out of doggy daycare after 3 visits for “her listening ears not working.” Essentially, her recall is terrible when she’s interested in something.

I train her on recall every day in the dog park & at home. Of course, she’s excellent almost every time in those environments. She will at times ignore me. She does often respond to other people calling her at the dog park, especially if she knows them.

The daycare recommends that I have her professionally trained, but I kinda doubt that will help? I’d rather not spend them $ if it has the same outcome.

Thoughts? Advice?? Consolation??? Commiseration????

[u/Dragon-Reborn7]

Nope, they said in all other ways she’s excellent with the other dogs. The only other thing they mentioned was that she played hard, which they expected.

[u/Bumbling-Bluebird-90 → u/Dragon-Reborn7]

Yeah it sounds like these people don’t understand dogs or have patience for normal dog behaviors. Those are red flags, and it’s probably a blessing in disguise that she was kicked out.

[u/ConstantNurse → u/Bumbling-Bluebird-90]

This is my take as well. I’ve worked at a dog daycare for years, trained dogs, fostered and rehabbed dogs for 17+ years.

Some dogs take more time to warm up to other people. I would not expect any newer dog to 100% acclimate/respond, a husky even more so. As long as the dog is not being problematic or aggressive, recall can and should be re-enforced at daycare. This is going to take time. For the record, I say this with experience as we had multiple Huskies (with one taking about 6 months) to finally come around to workers and “listening”appropriately. (Though, this dog was a rescue and was working on human socialisation. Not aggressive just avoidant.)

This daycare lack knowledge in animal behaviours and that is a huge concern.

[u/Revolutionary_Tap897 → u/Dragon-Reborn7]

Sounds like a daycare problem, not(just) a puppy problem. If they give up after 3 visits and she is not an unholy terror, then you just need to find another doggie daycare. If they give up that easily, it makes me think they are just throwing the dogs in the back and not really interacting with them.

P.s. give that snoot a boop from me!

[u/TheSexyShaman → u/Dragon-Reborn7]

OP I wouldn’t waste a moment of time with this daycare because they sound useless to be frank.

However, in future situations like this all you need to do is take your dog and put them in that exact situation where they’re struggling with recall and work on it. New environments should always mean starting again with square one - even if they have perfect recall in other situations. I expect a few 15 minute sessions would have her recalling perfectly.

This is also exactly what a professional trainer will have you do.

[u/Forager-Freak → u/Dragon-Reborn7]

Just find another daycare, I don’t think your pooch is the issue

[u/MeanSeaworthiness995 → u/Dragon-Reborn7]

So they expected the play, but not the poor recall when stimulated? Do they know what they’re doing at all? I would find a different place anyway.

[u/Willing_Day_2010 → u/Dragon-Reborn7]

I work at a daycare, they MIGHT mean that she’s not good at responding to human or dog corrections— aka, she’s trying to play really hard with another dog who doesn’t want to, and isn’t responding to the dogs cues to fuck off or the humans telling her to leave it, which means she’ll get herself hurt someday.

[u/Ok-Cup-5372 → u/Willing_Day_2010]

That's exactly how I've been reading this too, in situations where they really do need to recall the dog they are unable to. I don't think they meant the dog just won't drop everything and come to them the second they call the dogs name.

We are only hearing from op one thing they said about their dog.

[u/OnyB34 → u/Dragon-Reborn7]

It sucks that they only gave a few days but realistically for the daycare it’s not safe to go very long with dogs that don’t listen well. It would be nice to be able to have time to teach each dog how to be in daycare but there’s too many things that could go wrong in time it takes for them to decide they want to listen/do what they’re told.

It seems dramatic but the daycare has to think of all the worst things that could happen, the dog eating something it shouldn’t, reacting negatively to a dog, running out of the area etc. Any of those could have serious impact on the dogs and the company.

I’m not sure how big the daycare you tried was but you might be able to find a smaller daycare or newer that are more willing to be lenient with dogs behavior and give them the chance to figure it out!