Always Unleashed Pet Resort — Local services in Scottsdale

Let me tell you a story. It’s about two dogs. A couple of years ago a dog named Copper went on the euthanization list at Maricopa county. If someone didn’t pick him up that day and adopt him, his life would be over. So I drove down there and got him. He was a pitbull. He had been in the shelter for many months and was very aggressive. We were determined to save Copper and so we brought him home and introduced him to our other two dogs- English cocker spaniel and German wiry pointer (Draathar to be exact). And copper was totally fine with a small dog, but he did not like our big dog Kaizer. Kaizer is an amazing dog. He’s full of energy, he’s a hunting dog and he is pure muscle. He towered over copper. There was no reason for him to be scared of copper. Copper took months to get used to Kaizer and he would aggressively try to attack Kaizer. All the times that copper tried to go after Kaizer, not one time did Kaizer try to fight back. After about three months, they became best friends. I’m telling you the story for a reason. Last year we lost Copper to Valley fever. Kai lost his best friend and he needed a release for all of his energy that he had. So we decided that we would take him to always unleashed once or twice a week. Especially during the times whenever we were out of town and he was being dogsat. Kai has been there 10+ times in the last few months. Now I will say, I haven’t been 100% happy with my service there. The groomer is amazing and sweet and great. That’s the only thing I like about always unleashed now. Every time we go there, they always had to make a smart Alec comment about Kaizer‘s collar or his tracker or something. So this takes me back to last week when my dog tracker was turned off. It’s a GPS tracker, and it has to be turned off manually. I was concerned after his tracker was turned off and so I checked the cameras. We watched the cameras for about 20 minutes and we could not find our dog anywhere. So we called up there. We were told they would call us back with a report. After about 15 minutes, we get a phone call back saying that Kai is fine and that he’s playing with the other dogs. We didn’t think very much of it and we weren’t too worried. We still didn’t see him on the cameras, but we thought maybe he was just in an area where we couldn’t see him. This takes me to today, when my husband picked up our dog, he was in a room by himself. My husband and I both work from home so the only reason that we take him to the dog camp so that he can get his energy out with the other dogs. One of the employees they told us that they have been isolating Kai, because some of the other dogs are aggressive towards his “high energy”. First, I don’t know why you wouldn’t lock up the aggressive dog, not the one with the high energy. I think it’s animal abuse just to lock a dog up in a room by themselves all day and not even bother to call the owner and let them know what is going on. So I called up there, and I asked the owner to call me. Karen, the owner called me back and informed me immediately that Kai was being aggressive and that’s why they had to put him in another room. That is the biggest load of BS I have ever heard in my life. Remember that story I told you about copper earlier? If Kai isn’t going to be aggressive towards another dog, who is very aggressive in his own home, why would he be aggressive at a dog camp. Also, Kai has been there 10+ times and apparently this is not the first time he has been isolated by himself. however, this is the first I am hearing of it. She also can’t seem to find any camera footage of my dog being aggressive because they didn’t save any of it. What a coincidence. After reading a few of the reviews, it turns out that they apparently can mace your dog here as a last resort. Better read the fine print because I didn’t see that when I brought my dog here. disgusting.

Update- Kai has been coughing since visiting here. Took him to vet and he thinks it’s kennel cough. (There is no...

All pet owners beware of Always Unleashed ("AU"). We put our 2 yr old Shepherd there for a couple daily overnights before our month-long summer trip back east to make sure she fit in. As background, our Shepherd is extremely fit and active. At home she swims and we take daily walks to the park where she races to fetch tennis balls launched long distances. Essentially, she's the equivalent of an olympic track star as far as fitness and ability to take strenuous activity. She's no lazy couch potato. One of the reasons we chose AU was because of the online cameras and the ability to visually check in on our family member :) while away. We packed and dated individual baggies of food for each day she would be there just to be sure WE weren't missing anything. Sadly, during our trip we were able to see our pup only THREE DAYS of the entire 4-weeks trip. Where was she? They have cameras hitting just about every corner of the interior and exterior dog areas and yet she was nowhere to be found. We tried calling just to politely ask where she was at a particular moment and were treated as though they were just too busy to even take the call. Okay, no problem. But then halfway thru the 3rd week, we received a call telling us they had run out of food. WHAT?!?!? We specifically packed a ziploc bag for every single day! When we asked what happened, again - treated as if "how dare you question us!" We ended having to pay for a week and a half of extra food that mysteriously disappeared. And then the coup de gras, when we returned to pick up our pup, she was emaciated and sick. As we dealt with the shock of seeing our normally healthy Shepherd barely able to walk out to our car, we again asked about the camera situation. GOOD LORD - the rudeness we were met with over a basic question re: one of the perks they advertise as a selling point (to be able to see your dog) was unbelievable. They also never provided an acceptable excuse for using up 4 weeks of food in less than 3 weeks and clearly our dog didn't get that food - apparently they gave the food to other dogs?? In fact they had no answer at all. And finally they blamed her poor condition at pick up on the strange claim that she must not be fit enough to handle the activities there. Wow. If that were true, which it is not, we checked daily and rarely saw her on either playground or in the pool, so that excuse falls flat. Please - Scottsdale dog owners - there are shady things going on there to say the least - look elsewhere - there are plenty of choices which we won't mention here so as not to appear biased towards any one particular resort but believe us - help your pet and put him/her in...

Let me begin by saying that the owner was very prompt in responding to my concerns when my dog stayed at Always Unleashed. I chose to put my dog at Always Unleashed in Tiny Town because I liked the idea that the dogs were together and she did not have to sleep in a room by herself. I knew she would not be happy with that. Poppy did fine at her meet and greet so we decided to board her there for our vacation. We had noticed on the video footage that the staff didn’t seem to interact much with the dogs, just walked back and forth cleaning up. I mentioned this to Shea and told her that we couldn’t afford to pay for someone to pet her on top of the boarding. She was very nice and said she’d put a note that Poppy likes to be held. When we dropped her off the woman at the desk seemed to be dealing with a payment issue with someone else and was not able to help us. We would have gladly waited for her to be done, but instead a man came down and literally grabbed Poppy from my husband’s arms and opened the door to send her upstairs. We watched Poppy on the video footage as soon as we left her and pretty much every spare moment we had. Again, we had noticed on the video footage that the staff didn’t seem to interact much with the dogs, just walked back and forth cleaning up. We would see Poppy follow the humans around whenever they were around. She would jump on them and they would either push her down or ignore her. We knew it would take her time to adjust and we didn’t expect her to be petted or picked up all the time, especially when there were so many dogs there during daycare hours. We hoped for an occasional scratch behind the ears or a back scratch. When I say we watched all throughout the day and night I mean we were looking at those cameras every hour. Luckily, we had a relative that could pick her up or we wouldn’t have had any fun on vacation. When we contacted them to let them know Poppy would be picked up early and shared our concerns, they assured us that Poppy was getting plenty of attention and sent videos. However, the videos had no time stamp and all featured the same person wearing the same clothes. That person was the same one working during the time we called, which led us to believe that the videos were taken after our complaint. I’m not saying that Always Unleashed is a terrible place. I would encourage anyone who is planning to board their dog there watch the video footage for awhile and see if you think it is a good fit...