BreedAbove — Attraction in Ann Arbor

TL:DR; not for my dog, and probably not for yours either.

I have to say, my dog is socialized and friendly, who loves dog parks and play dates with other dogs, but could be skittish at unknown places & for big noises. Well this is part of the reason why I took her, so she’s eventually get used to noise/traffic/chaos that she may need to experience elsewhere (in a city, 4th of July, some events with big crowds etc) I took her about ~20 times for day camp per their recommendations , after an year long wait of signing her up due to the capacity limit. Looks like they have no such thing these days and that was a mistake.

I don’t want to blame anyone who brings their dogs here, but to me it looked every dog is barking from the bottom of the lung, and due to such problems (separation anxiety? Reactive dogs?) those owners had to leave the dogs at this place, instead of for their enrichment/socializations/training(!).

My dog doesn’t love to be barked at to begin with, but she started to shake terribly and refused to enter the building after few visit. I told myself she’s gonna get better eventually, but she never did, not only that she’s pretty traumatized enough she hates car rides too. (It’s on me as well to make her that way, I take the responsibility too) The thing I did not like about, is how BAGUE their program is. In the past their website explained what’s the day care vs day camp a little more precisely, now they don’t. Every time I pick her up and ask “how she was?” I had to wait 10 mins for a stuff just to say on a walkie talkie “she didn’t do great”. nothing in detail. Staffs are nice, and I really feel bad for them, but to my eyes they are significantly understaffed. I watch a camera (which, is horrible quality and angles) I see a single staff with 30+ dogs. How can you even pay attention to each of them let alone “training” (website claims so)? Not to mention I cannot see my dog in a camera at all when she gets “play time” (which I have no idea how it even looks like, or they do that to begin with) all I could see was my dog in a crate panting good 30min-1 hr straight. I can crate her at my own home much easily if that’s what she gets for the most of the stay. In addition to that I only get message from a stuff on an app after 15-20 visit to tell me that my dog is not doing great at their facility, I think I know my dog well enough I could tell. (Not saying they are the only culprit of my dog’s issue/concerns, but really poor customer management in general)

Overall, I just cannot recommend if you have a somewhat trained dogs. They will definitely get worse in this condition (my dog now barks for the slightest noises which she didn’t do in the past). Who wants to be yelled/barked at 7+ hrs straight? I don’t and mine either. They need to significantly increase the stuff members, provide better quality care for existing customers. (Or more so, be picky who to accept really.) I will look for somewhere they can actually pay attention to each...

I’m saddened to share this experience, but feel it is necessary to keep our dogs safe. My 10 month old puppy was under the care of Breed Above for the day, recently, and when I picked him up, the staff handed me this piece of metal with my dogs microchip and ID tags hanging from it. I asked how this could have happened and got “oh, he must have gotten caught in something” to “I wasn’t personally here this morning so I don’t know what happened” and “he’s not supposed to have his collar on, so I don’t know what happened”. After thinking about it, I realized that this had to have been done by a human. They either ripped the tags off while my dog was wearing his collar, or a person took my dogs collar off and damaged it that way. Either way, it’s disturbing. He was smelly, dirty, and anxious after I picked him up. He was starving and thirsty-they didn’t feed him the food I brought. I thought it was strange when I checked the webcams and noticed around 70 dogs, some inside a playpen and some outside. It was raining, but they were bombarded with dogs without a staff member in sight. My gut told me that the story about the tag ring wasn’t adding up and I was sure someone would follow up to see how my dog was doing. He had diarrhea for 36 hours from the stress of being at Breed Above and nobody took the time to check in with us or offer to make the situation...

For a few months BreedAbove was good to us with our dog then it wasn't. We were never alerted to any issue with our dog until we were warned that she might not be allowed back. (Every pick up we asked how the day was, staff always replied good and the staff was always happy to see her) We went through the follow up weeks to see if she could stay and we were informed she couldn't. (which during that time she became afraid of going to BreedAbove) We have since taken our dog to other camps that have camera's and we can watch her interactions with other dogs. (as everything they stated to us was news and nothing we've ever seen) We informed the new locations as to what BreedAbove stated with them denying having any issues. As I mentioned there are three other daycares we go to now, none having an issue with her and we watch over the cameras often without seeing any incidents.

Also talking to more people in the dog daycare world it was stated that several people have had issues with BreedAbove doing this and then recommending to have us buy dog training packages. (when talking to others the name of this business (BreedAbove) was never mentioned. (they tried to get us to do training packages too)

Like many others have mentioned other locations in and around Ann Arbor have cameras that you can watch anytime and are less expensive...