Coddled Critters Pet Resort and Spaw — Attraction in North Salt Lake

I am giving Coddled Critters 5 stars because over the past several years they have taken good care of my dogs (Ruby Dew and then recently Tikaani) I love the staff and the report cards. I have to use their services because I do travel occasionally for work and vacation. The weird part of this review is I am writing it to express frustration with a new policy and also inform them that because of it they have lost me as a customer (and yes I am still giving them 5 stars. haha) Today when I picked up my pup I saw a written policy posted on the front door and counter regarding how owners need to supply their own food for their pets. It can't be in a bag but must be in a ziplock bag with their name on it, no big deal here as I have been doing that and it is easy. But now they want me to use small individual zip lock bags, one prepared for each meal my dog will eat or they will charge me a $25 fee. I am sorry, I am doing 100 things as I run out the door before I leave town, I am not counting, labeling, filling and then carrying all these bags along with my pup into the kennel. The reason for this new policy they say is to save staff time. Ummmmm, it takes a few seconds to open a large ziplock bag, put a scoop in, and dump it in the food bowl. I actually timed myself doing it 3 times, trying to go slow, and each time it was under 12 seconds (In my younger days I was a vet tech and worked in the attached kennel as well and truly do not understand the logic behind this policy) The amount of time and effort they want me to go through as a customer to use their product is no longer acceptable. Also, do I need to pack extra bags in case we get in past the time for pickup or my dog will not eat because I only brought X number of bags rather than a single large bag with plenty of food in it? As a business owner myself with over 60 employees I understand the dynamics of balancing taking care of your customers and employees. To me this is a case of telling your employees to buck up and do their job. I suspect there are some other issues that are creating time suckage and this is the excuse they give on why it took so long to feed the animals. (Phone, smoke break, talking, playing with animals) But it baffles me how opening a large bag, taking a scoop out and putting it in a bowl takes so much more time then storing and organizing all the individual meal bags with the right animals and grabbing one of those smaller bags, opening it and pouring the food into the bowl......I mean honestly, what is the time savings between those two if any? If you have 100 dogs and spend 3 seconds longer fumbling with a large bag and scoop vs individual small bag then you spent an extra 5 minutes completing meal time for the entire kennel. I am not convinced this saves any time, but I am VERY convinced it will waste a lot of mine getting my dog ready to take to the kennel. And while I do not care about the amount of the $25 fee, I do have issues paying for things that should not be extra or policies I just find irritable and designed to waste my time. This policy feels like an ill-conceived solution to a problem that doesn't exist. I will be looking for a new kennel immediately. If I find every other kennel in the area is also requiring clients to bring each meal individually wrapped and prepared then I will modify this post to just show the 5 stars and a big thank you for the past several years of taking care of my pups. Thank you so much and I do wish you all the best. I appreciate all the work and love you have put into this company over the years. Respect from one small business...

The facility was great, my dog is intact so she was in her own area, but they let other females come and play with her occasionally so I know she wasn't lonely. She's a bit rambunctious, she plays with our other dog and they can get crazy so I'm glad she did well and that they let her play with other dogs. Hopefully she wasn't to much of a handful. Unfortunately I was quoted a different price on grooming and had to pay more than I was told when I came to pick up my dog. I was told the grooming fee was $60 over the phone, they knew she was a standard golden-doodle since I gave them all the information before dropping her off so I figured that the $60 was the fee for large breeds but it turned out to be $80. I know it's only $20 more but I probably wouldn't have gotten her groomed if I knew it was that much, I thought $60 was pushing it since she only needed to get her hair trimmed and evened out from the awful haircut I gave her, so to me I don't think it was worth it at least until her hair grew out a bit longer, but that's just me (It's a fair price, don't get me wrong). I was told that they recently raised the prices so the person I was talking to may have given me the old price on accident. She does look fantastic though! They did a really good job! The prices are very reasonable overall, so I didn't mind paying the extra bit, but it was a little frustrating having to pay more than expected. Accidents happen and this was just a case of miscommunication. I also tried to email them about how my dog was doing since I was out of the country and my phone service didn't work and I never got a response. I know emailing isn't a good way to contact them but they've corresponded via email with me before the trip so I was hoping they would have gotten back to me. I would have liked to receive any form of update to know how she was doing since it was the first time I've boarded her, it would have eased the nerves a little. Plus I didn't know about the webcam (which is awesome) until I got home, but that was my bad for not looking. Overall, it was a good place, the staff was nice, the only problems I had were lack of communication and being told the wrong price, but it seemed like an honest mistake. Only suggestion based off my experience is to keep in touch with the...

I originally left a three-star review, however, yesterday the operations manager left me a voicemail asking what could have been done differently or what I was displeased about with our experience. Today the owner called me and asked the same questions. Because they contacted me within 24 hours of me leaving the review I am bumping them up a star because I think that shows they clearly care about their customers and what improvements they may be able to make. With that being said the owner and I discussed what my husband and I did not like about our boarding experience, which is mainly how long they are in the kennel for. On weekends they are kenneled from 6p.m. to 6 a.m., which I find to be quite extreme and often the reason I am boarding him is so he does not have to be in a crate for that long. I was also watching the cameras a significant amount of time over the days he was being boarded and I saw him being kenneled longer than what they claim they kennel them for which is (breakfast 1hr, lunch 2hr, dinner at 4pm 1hr) considering they are kenneled for 12 hours I think kenneling them an additional 4 hours during the day is also a bit much, but that's beside the point because what I saw on cameras is that he was being kenneled for longer than that. My dog was also clearly not happy being boarded there considering when I was watching the cameras he was barking/yelping the whole time, he is not a dog who barks at all except one bark at the door as we have trained him, when we took him home and heard him bark his voice had been clearly strained and was so for the next few days. He is also a very social dog and when I watched the cameras he did not play with any of the other dogs, honestly, none of the dogs really played together, they mostly just waited at the fence for employees to come in. The owner said that they kennel their dogs the shortest of any boarding facility in the state, whether that is true, I honestly don't know. But just because you are the shortest doesn't mean you can't do even better for our dogs. So, would I board him here again? Possibly. But I'm going to do more research into other boarding facilities. Perhaps they are the "best". With that being said, my in-laws have boarded their dog here for 7 years and have never had a bad...