Camp Bow Wow Waukesha — Attraction in Waukesha

We had a camp interview for our 2 pups today. Extremely disappointed with the lack of friendliness, compassion, and lack of education in animal behavior in the staff here and ineffective interview process. Our 40# mixed breed was integrated to the play group ok. This was a new experience for our 10 month old small dog. She was in fact very nervous. She needed to be separated from her "sister" as they are in different size play groups. This combined with new people, new environment, new pups. Our puppy was dragged to the play yard where the staff quickly allowed her to be surrounded by other pups. She was left to sit against the gate in a defensive position. We were told after less than FIVE minutes she was not allowed to stay. The reasons; she was nervous, she barked, she "grumbled" (again, she was backed into a corner) . No one made any attempt to integrate her into the group or comfort her. No effort was made to draw her out of the corner. Working in animal behavior for 20+ years and even having worked at Camp Bow Wow myself I was utterly in shock. The interview process is supposed to start with each pup being safely leashed. They are then supposed to be walked around the play yard to sniff it out. Another pup of similar size, age, sex is brought in on leash and these dogs are alowed to meet, sniff and walk around together. If this goes well they proceed to off leash and slowly, other pups are added (this was verfied by Camp Bow Wow Corporate) . NONE of this occurred. Can you imagine the risks of skipping these steps with large dogs?! They are using clients daycare/boarding dogs as "test dogs" with interview dogs they know nothing about! The interview is supposed to be 3 hours to allow pups to acclimate. However it was decided in less than 5 minutes that a puppy with no prior daycare, large play group experience, that was nervous in the first few minutes, was not allowed to stay for a complete interview. The employee that conducted the interview said they "didn't feel comfortable having her stay". If you don't feel comfortable acclimating a nervous 15# dog into a small play group, you may want to educate yourself on basic canine behavior or seek a different profession. It was clear from the start of our visit that it was an "inconvenience" for this staff member to work. She clearly did not want to do anything besides throwing dogs into the yard and getting back to her chair. Both our dogs are social and dog friendly and interact with other pups on a daily basis at our grooming salon as well as dog parks. It was disturbing that our pup was not even given 5 minutes to adjust to the differences of the situation. When we brought up our concerns via review Camp then lied publicly, stating she would not let other dogs approach her and implied she was aggressive. I would love for them to post the video of her "interview" as this is not what was observed via the cameras. Perhaps this was for the better though. We already had to reschedule our interview due to a kennel cough outbreak at the facility. We should have known a facility that would allow contagious dogs to stay and continue to board should need to brush up on their education. This facility is not set up to quarantine, which is what they stated they were doing. Yes, they removed DAYCARE dogs but per phone conversation with their staff they were allowing infected boarding dogs to remain, use the same yards, water buckets etc. Dogs that were exposed to these dogs but not yet showing symptoms were also allowed to freely interact with everyone. I can't imagine all the boarding and daycare dogs that were exposed...

I used to love this place until my dog was injured while in day camp. We received a call that he was bleeding and they didn't know how he had been hurt. When we arrived we found he was indeed injured and bleeding from the wound. We rushed him to Lakeshore Veterinary where he ended up needed emergency surgery. He had a 2 inch puncture wound! The lack of concern by the staff was what we found most disconcerting. Although they did pay for the emergency care we never once received any calls asking how our pup was doing afterwards. All calls to initiate a conversation about the whole event and to even begin requesting information on what happened were initiated by us. The only halfway good thing they did was to pay for the emergency care as they should have. They say how much they care about your pet but it showed very little once ours was injured. There's no way we would ever be comfortable bringing him back to Camp Bow Wow again. Even after reviewing the tapes we couldn't get a straight answer about what happened to him. One key thing to ask any dog facility is what is the pet to attendant ratio. At Camp Bow Wow its lacking. What happened is disturbing all around and has jaded us from using these type of services again especially without a more rigorous inquiry into all aspects of...

Terrible experience. The dogs are not well taken care of or cared for and the staff seems lazy and unwilling to interact with most of the dogs (aside from what seems to be their groups of favorites). The dogs often will sit in their kennels for long periods of time. Or will be ignored the whole day in the play yards. The staff is not compassionate about dogs who may have heath related issues or are just a bit older and dont often make any accommodations for such situations I was watching my pet on ths cameras one day a while back when I saw a dog alone in a yard with no other dogs or staff members and the dog was seemingly having some sort of health issue that was not being monitored. The staff is also not well trained in dog body language or behavior and are also seemingly more interested in talking with their coworkers in the yards beside them than actually paying attention to their yard ( again seen on camera watching my own pup) It should also be noted that the yards are only fully cleaned what looks like once a day, and often cleaned in a rush so its not being cleaned well.

I'd never bring my pup back here as I have seen far to many things that make me uncomfortable just by watching the cameras and id recommend that no one brings...