Hello Doggy

We’re 0 for 3 on this place so far. The staff is friendly and well-​intentioned, we’ve just had three bad experiences in a row here.
Stay 1: Note to people leaving your dogs there all day – They do not take your dog outside for bathroom breaks all day unless you pay extra for a walk. Perhaps it was naïve of me to assume that dogs would get potty breaks when they are there for over eight hours. My dog made it out of the play area and immediately dropped a gallon of urine by the front door while I was settling up with the cashier at the end of the day.
Stay 2: Dropped dog off at 11am to let her run around with her pals, asked to please leave her out during nap time so she could run off some energy – I would be back at 3. I arrived early at 2.30 to find that my dog was currently in a kennel, and had been kenneled since noon for nap time. Added bonus: she contracted contagious warts on her lips from another dog there.
Stay 3: Contracted eye infection.

I have a hyperactive german shorthaired pointer puppy, and raising him in the city has been a challenge. I’ve learned through experimentation that two to three short, calm walks a day are the best way to keep him calm. Every once in awhile, though, I need a «reset» — ie a span of constant playing and running around to tire him out a little so we can go back to just walking.
I’m not a huge fan of regular all day daycare for a few reasons: 1. In the long term, I do need my dog to learn to be alone and enjoy it, and that’s a process that we’re in with training and conditioning, 2. My dog’s trainer said that too much playtime with other dogs without regular mental stimulation can lead to elevated cortisol levels, which will make my dog’s occasional separation anxiety worse. So despite the temptation to just drop off my dog and forget about him every day, I’ve been careful to limit day care time and leave my dog at home with a «job» ie arranging and rearranging his toys, eating his meal in his kong or meal dispenser, killing his stuffed rabbit over and over again, and looking out the window to appraise the neighborhood and keep an eye on birds. 3. My dog is allergic to something environmental at pretty much every daycare I’ve tried. I haven’t taken him through expensive and exhausting allergy testing, and don’t plan to. It’s enough for me to just bathe him when I pick him up and give him some benadryl when he comes home, which I can do if he only goes occasionally.
But god, what a godsend to have this when you really need it! The best thing about Hello Doggy, to me, is that you can just drop your dog off for three hours to play and pay for just the quarter day. And this is an option that I like to utilize much more than daycare. My dog gets the equivalent of three walks in one stretch, and I can go about my busy day and not worry about him. I don’t have to make an appointment or anything. In addition, the staff have been really understanding and generous the times I picked him up late.
And to be honest, every once in awhile there’s a day when I hate my dog. He acts crazy and is getting into everything (and I mean everything. He can open the refrigerator) and even though he responds to «drop it,» he starts up again the second I turn away. And these are the times I either book him to board with a sitter, or just put him in a daycare for the day. I need this occasional break in order to be patient and compassionate with him.
In addition, their self wash bath station is the cheapest I’ve seen in the city.
Previously I utilized Diamond Dogs on Montrose, which is the same distance from my home and quite a bit cheaper. And I’m on the waitlist at Fetch and Play. But I switched over to Hello Doggy because the location is more convenient for me, the space is bigger, and the staff are helpful and more patient with my hell raiser of a dog.
In response to some of the more negative reviews here: The staff here are incredibly nice and supportive and clearly love dogs, but they are busy taking care of the dogs and do not have time to chit chat. Which is probably why their intake is weird — no one had time to tell me about the business and answer my questions when I came here for the first time, and I was annoyed. I probably would have given them a bad review if I hadn’t given them a second chance. But all of them have been really great with my dog Dorje — both Marisol and Dan, and the rest whose names I don’t yet know. As for coming home with a cold — yeah, that happens, just like when you send a child to daycare. They’re called germs, and dogs and children transmit them easily. Seems like a lot of the complaints are issues with the risks of dog daycare in general, not specific to Hello Doggy. Regular, every day daycare isn’t a good option for my dog and my training goals, so it’s something for others to consider. I personally don’t blame that on the business. Also, with water: don’t you remember playing as a child, when you would run around like crazy, and then come in and drink water for like five whole minutes? Same with dogs. My dog does the same thing, but his urine is clear and dilute, too, which tells me that he probably drank plenty at daycare.
As for suggested improvements: 1. I don’t care about air conditioning. If it’s cool enough for the human staffers to work there, it’s cool enough for the dogs. I don’t even turn the air conditioner on in my home. 2. A webcam would be nice i guess, but the whole reason I’m dropping him off is so I can forget about him, so I probably wouldn’t utilize it. I also don’t think it’s good for employee performance to enact that level of scrutiny — it hinders judgment and it adds the element of appearances to decision making. 3. The one thing I do wish they had were packages for the quarter days. I plan on doing that regularly and have no plans to have all day daycare, so it would be nice if I could buy those in a package.

Terrible place to take a dog, the first issue was when i picked up my dog and was bleeding from her head and they told me it started by itself, how stupid. Second thing, every time i was walking to take her she was really scared and crying for some reason and refused to go in to this place. And the third and last time was when i went to a trip for thanksgiving and when i picked her up her bed was soaked in pee something that my dog will never do even if she really needs to go and there was hair from a black dog, my dog is white. I dont know if they hit my dog that didnt wanna go in there, they probably let her sleep on the floor and gave the bed to a different dog to sleep and pee it. Anyway, i call this place and they just said we’ll call u back. They never call me and i had to get another dog bed and i lost the extra two weeks that i paid in advance. But i’ll never take my dog to this place again.

Terrible groomer service, we brought our dog for a full groom and they just shaved her very unevenly, I think they didn’t even bored to actually give her a bath. Will never come back. I think they were just lazy.

Went there to get a quick nail trim for my dog. The girl working there filed my dog’s nails down and also filed part of my dog’s foot pad. Now it’s red and raw, with a flap of skin hanging off. I noticed it when I brought her home. Will never go there for a nail trim again.

Had my Pomeranian there for 4 days while I was on a trip. He came back with a cold and was extremely thirsty. He couldn’t stop drinking water for like 20 minutes. They obviously didn’t give him water for a long period of time. The Manager Dan is extremely rude. I wouldn’t go back.

I was told the dogs were separated by size, but my husband informed me he watched the staff put our 14 pound dog in a play area with very large dogs.
She came home thirsty as though she did not have the opportunity to drink water all day. Frankly, the woman at the front desk offered poor customer service to us and ignored our dog when she began to become distressed. We gave them two tries because they are in our neighborhood and will never take her back.

My lab, Ned, has gone here 3 days a week for over a year now. Prior to going to Hello Doggy, I had a walker who lived in my building, but had to switch when I moved. The walker was excellent and took Ned for an hour walk daily, but that just doesn’t compare to a full day of playing. Now Ned is so tired the day after day care that he naps for the entire day. And the rates for day care are comparable to that of other walkers in the city, let alone a full day of day care! Aside from the rates, there are a number of other things I really like about Hello Doggy:
1. Room to run — piggy backing off my last point, he comes home so tired because he’s able to play and run — the space is huge (larger than some of the dog parks I’ve been to in the city) and that’s key for a young lab to get his energy out!
2. Pick-​up service — I don’t have a car so the pick-​up service is great! Ned gets picked up in the morning, along with other dogs in the area, and dropped in the late afternoon. The people who come for pick-​ups are reliable and trustworthy and Ned loves to see them, which is a good sign!
3. Attention and care — when things seem a little off with Ned at day care, they let me know, which is wonderful. Once, he got the runs and they let me know and offered to keep an eye on him the next day as well because I had to work and didn’t want him in the house alone. Another time, they noticed that he was rubbing his ear a lot and it turned out he had gotten an ear infection from swimming that weekend. They keep a good eye on the dogs and let you know if they notice anything you might miss!
4. How they handle accidents — I was very impressed with Hello Doggy when Ned had an accident while there. He has no awareness of his body and scraped his leg on a fence post, leading to stitches. They took him straight to the vet and called me right away. I felt very comfortable having him in their care (I was out of town for the week) and they showed me the video when I returned to ensure that there were no issues. I do not question the responsibility of the employees or how they treat the dogs at all.
5. Overnight boarding — again, I find the prices for boarding to be very reasonable. Additionally, I feel very comfortable leaving Ned there for overnight stays. He always comes home happy and is excited to go back the next time!
All in all, I’m very happy with Hello Doggy and love sending my dog there! Ned approves too!

To be completely honest and blunt, I’m kind of confused as to why this place is rated so highly when comparing to other places both in the city and suburbs. I previously took my dog here but have since moved on to another (nicer) daycare. Anybody who has «shopped around» would be able to agree with me when I say that this place is nothing special. Granted, the price for daycare is about $ 5 cheaper than other places in the area, but the quality, webcams, smaller play groups, and overall sense of comfort that my dog will be taken care of seem to be worth the extra $ 5 charged by other places. I will say that Dan is very nice and appreciated his welcoming demeanor when I first brought my dog in; however, Dan is not always there. The other staff I have interacted with have appeared aloof and not outwardly friendly. There appeared to be new faces quite frequently, and I never really got a sense that these people truly cared about my dog, let alone learned her name. I also question the amount of training these people have, as they didn’t appear to really give intelligible responses to any of my questions on the facility/​daycare.
This past May, there was a price increase, and I never quite understood the reason behind the increase. There has long been an empty promise of webcams on their website («webcams coming soon» — this message has been up for nearly a year), so initially, I thought maybe the price increase was due to enhanced services (i.e. webcams), as many other daycare facilities utilize. Not so much. As Amanda W. wrote, I sometimes wonder if they were trying to hide something, especially after reading about the incident she mentioned. Webcams are not that difficult to install nor are they a large capital investment, so I’m surprised that as of January 2015, these still haven’t been installed.
Two other things I was told when I first toured was that they would open the garage doors in the summer to give the dogs fresh air and that there was also AC. I took my dog here all summer, and never once did I see those doors open. The smell in this place is wretched (another thing I don’t quite understand — never have the same stench in other daycare facilities), so maybe getting some fresh air in there might help them? Also, they do have AC, but what they didn’t specify was that the AC is only in the office area and NOT where the dogs are playing. When I called this out to the girl working the front desk on a pretty warm day in the summer (I felt the heat from the play area when they opened the play area door to bring my dog out), she assured me that they have some baby pools out for the dogs. What about the dogs terrified of water? I know for a fact that my hairy dog will never willingly go into water, no matter how hot she is.
Hello Doggy may work for those people who are more focused on low cost and convenience, but as I mentioned above, I prefer to pay the extra $ 5 somewhere else with higher quality service.

My girlfriend and I took our dog here a few weeks back and received terrible service. Our biggest gripe is that our dog came back with a huge gash over his eye. I understand dogs are playful, but they acted as if it was normal and nothing happened. It wasn’t until she asked about it that we got a word refarding his injury. We won’t be taking our dog here again because of the most important rule in my book… his safety. In terms of the actual facility, it’s blacked out so you can’t see in, I understand so the dogs can’t see the owners, but two way mirrors work too. They also didn’t provide report cards regarding his bathroom usage, eating/​drinking or nap. We took him there for the convenience and looks, but it was a major dissapointment. Good luck if you go here.

We were really happy with Hello Doggy, and really sad to have to stop using them for our pups as we relocated to Minneapolis in October. We started using them right as they opened up with our dog Cooper (an 11 year old dachshund). They took really good care of her — she’s kind of old and particular (but friendly!) and they let her do her thing. I would often find her chillin’ at the front desk, welcoming people as they came in. They probably should have given her a green Hello Doggy polo (and maybe a paycheck!) :)
Then in may we adopted a 2 month old Chihuahua, Charlie. I was really anxious to take her to any day care (I call it «Camp») because i wouldn’t be able to control the socialization and behaviors, but Charlie came out better than when she went in and was socialized more than I could ever have accomplished. They took great care of her (and several threatened to steal her…). Now when I take her to the dog parks in Minneapolis, I have nothing to worry about (except other peoples poorly trained and unsocialized dogs) because I don’t have a crazy Chihuahua, which has always been my goal (thank you HD for helping accomplish that!)
The only suggestion I have is to be more consistent with the email reports sent when dogs are boarded there overnight. When they first opened, if we would board cooper there we always got an email update and a quick note on how she did. Over the course of the year, those dwindled and were often forgotten. Dog owners who are trusting their pups to a place overnight really look forward to a note saying that everything is going well. (I won’t withhold a star for that though — HD was a life saver for us!)
The best part — they came home exhausted every day — and that is all I needed! Dan and team were fantastic to us and our pups, very flexible with services (we leveraged the pick up and drop off a few times), and always had room for Charlie and Cooper. Thanks so much. We miss HD a ton (and can’t find anything comparable in Minneapolis). Keep up the great work!

Unfortunately, we no longer go to Hello Doggy. We miss the convenience and how kind Dan was to us, but we just don’t trust them anymore. It disappoints me to update my original (good) review with a negative one, but there were just too many things that made us uneasy.
One thing was that they have no air conditioning in the dog play areas. We did not find this out until taking classes there, and on a hotter Summer evening it was uncomfortable for us, so I can only imagine how it is for the dogs playing during the day. Given that this would only be an issue on Summer days, it wasn’t an immediate deal breaker, but did give us pause that this was never made clear before, and we really don’t know how our dog does.
Another thing was, when my husband looked in on our dog one morning, after he was brought into the play area, he witnessed an employee hitting another dog on the head. While he recognized that maybe it was a quick reaction to keeping another dog off of ours, it still made us really uncomfortable. We both spoke to Dan the following week, who confirmed what my husband had seen on security footage, and was apologetic, but this was the second time we had brought the way their staff disciplined dogs into question, and despite our respect for Dan, we had concerns about bringing our dog back there.
The obvious solution I proposed is web cams. In fact, they had been advertised as «coming soon» since they opened more than a year ago, and that was when we knew it was usually Dan and a handful of staff there, and the amount of dogs they had were fewer. Now that there are more dogs, staff we don’t know, and concerns about discipline, I just don’t know how else the owners can not make the web cams a priority unless they are knowingly hiding other things. Nevertheless, we were made to feel as if action would be taken, but it never was, so we just moved on. I would now caution other owners against HD instead of recommending them.

Awesomeness!!! First time coming to Hello Doggie, and the service there is GREAT!!! Else where you tell them to clean your pup up and he comes out bald. I asked for a clean up… And we got a clean up!!! Ken did an amazing job! Very happy! Thank you so so so much! Sparky looks like a little man :) most defendant!!! I will bring my pup back there! Pricing is an A+ as well. Thank you once again guys! Good job!

The absolute worst daycare. I blame myself for what happened to my dog– for not doing enough research. The play area is big– which is great and overpopulated. My puppy of 8 month got into a fight w 3 big dogs… well they cornered him and messed him up so bad. They had video, but i couldn’t bring myself to watch it– But from what Dan told me– as they pulled one dog off, another attacked… so not enough staff? or not properly trained staff… My dog had 12 stitches on his ears– several lacerations. and overall a sad demeanor from this incident. When i picked him up from the vet– I couldnt believe my eyes… Needless to say I was crying my eyes out. I prefer a daycare with smaller play groups now. So beware and good luck if you go to this daycare…

Earlier this year, we had to say a sad goodbye to our 13-​year-​old Golden Retriever, who left behind his dutiful 10-​year-​old Golden Retriever buddy. Then we adopted a rescue mix 10-​month-​old guy we named Doug; a Golden mix with a bag of baggage who brought us a whirlwind of emotions, dynamics and different energy levels. Not to mention new alpha role configurations.
While I can’t say Hello Doggy gets ALL credit for harmony, they sure made a huge impact on what our lives are like now. We have taken Doug in for some day camps and left the other guy at home to regroup; reuniting them in harmony.

I’ve been taking my puppy (now 10 months old) to Hello Doggy since January. He now goes 2 – 3 days a week and he loves it. He comes home exhausted and happy. The staff at Hello Doggy seem to love him right back.
They started off with $ 15/​day daycare and changed the prices as of May 1 to $ 20/​day. With a pack of 20, you still get the $ 15/​day price. Even with the increase, 7am-​7pm boarding is a good deal. The dogs get plenty of room to play and mandatory naptime in the middle of the day. The staff will feed them if you want. You can even bring a favorite chew toy.
My puppy does come home a little smelly. Not dog-​smelly, but disinfectant smelly. I would imagine this happens at any daycare. Also, a few times he had poo on him when I picked him up. The staff cleaned him up for me as soon as we spotted it.
They also offer grooming services and puppy training classes (Pawsome Puppies). We went to the 6-​week basic puppy class and it really helped with basic obedience.
I am holding the 5^th star ransom until they fulfill their promise on their website for webcams. That’s been on there since I started going there 6 months ago. «Coming soon.»

I don’t often take the time to write a review, but after my dog Wrigley’s stay here last week, I had to. Hello Doggy is a terrific find for any dog owner. We have always had a dog sitter come in, but this year we decided that with us away for a week, Wrigley needed more socialization than two walks a day. Boy did Wrigley get it. Dogs have an opportunity to play with other dogs and with other humans.
Dan and all the staff at Hello Doggy are wonderful. They are smart and understand dogs and dog dynamics. They let the dogs play, but they don’t let them get out of hand. It takes a deft professional to understand dogs and how they behave. Kudos to each and everyone of them.
We also had Wrigley bathed before we picked him up. My husband spent a decade as a dog groomer and he is picky. We were thrilled with the grooming job that was done on our Wrigley. He looked and smelled great when we picked him up.
Cannot thank Dan and team enough for the care they gave our dog. Having Hello Doggy available to pick up and drop off every day opens up a world of spontaneous travel possibilities for us.
I encourage you to give Hello Doggy a try.

We’ve been taking our boy here since September 2013 I believe. He loves it! He is excited when he see’s the staff and he’s eager to get into the playroom every morning. Our baby has some serious separation anxiety, but Dan and his staff have accommodated him well. He comes home and completely passes out after his long day there! The price is right and the staff is friendly. They’re now offering training which we hope to take advantage of soon.

So far so good. We’ve done two days of doggy day care and can’t complain at all about $ 15 for 7am-​7pm. Staff is nice and helpful and our dog came back exhausted both times, which is such a blessing as we have a 7 month old baby and can’t get our dog out enough for proper exercise and attention.
Also got a bath for our dog and seemed like a good deal for $ 25. I hate giving him baths myself and it’s been a while since he was clean.
Will definitely try boarding next time we need him.
I must say, the first time you use day care, it’s free! Pretty awesome way to try them out. And, the referral program is pretty great…5 days of free day care by referring someone?
So glad Hello Doggy opened up in the neighborhood!

We’ve taken our dog here twice so far. Once, was for a few hours for a «trial» (our trial, not theirs). Our pup is only about 6 – 7 mos old and we wanted to make sure she’d do OK in a daycare environment. We picked her up after about 5 hours at daycare, and she could barely make it to the car then up the steps, she was so tired. Seeing our pup finally settled meant one thing — SIGN HER UP! She’ll be going every Monday.
She completed her first full day of daycare yesterday. A full 8 hours. Dan told us that she fell asleep in his lap by the end.
Everything you’ve read about Dan is true — he is an awesome guy and truly loves the dogs and does a great job running the place.
The prices are extremely reasonable. We bought a 10 day package because this place is like a god-​send for us and our pooch.
This might be the first time in life I have ever looked forward to Monday’s.