Gail Fisher, All Dogs Gym & Inn - The perfect place for pets and their people

An error occurred at All Dogs Gym last week that, fortunately, ended well, with no long-term effects other than the loss of a good and valued customer. But this error points out the fact that, no matter how well-intentioned, how conscientious and well-meaning people are, people are human – and humans make mistakes. I’m writing about this mistake for the very reason that, if it can happen in my place of business, where I know the care, devotion and dedication of our staff, it can happen anywhere. What was the error? We got two dogs mixed up, and sent one home with the wrong owner.

In reviewing what happened, it was like “the perfect storm” – a confluence of events that, had even one been different, the result would have been different. But it happened, and my staff and I are learning from it, making changes so that, hopefully, it never happens again.

The set-up for the Perfect Storm is that we remove dogs’ collars for safety. I’ve always insisted on this, having learned years ago the potential for disaster with collars. To eliminate any risk of a collar getting caught on something, dogs don’t wear collars in our kennel or daycare. With no collar, we have strategies for identifying dogs, a strategy that failed in this case. Perfect Storm event #1.

The dogs involved in this mix-up are, of course, very similar – black Labrador retrievers – the same color, age, gender, personality and behavior. Somehow, when staff had the dogs out in the yard getting exercised before going home, they got put back into the wrong runs. Perfect Storm event #2.

When the first dog was due to go home, the kennel person bringing the dog out was relatively new, and didn’t know the dogs well. Further, she had no reason to question that the black Lab in the run wasn’t the right dog. Perfect Storm event #3.

Perfect Storm event #4 was the fact that a surrogate, not the dog’s owner, but rather her mother picked the dog up from boarding. Being a Lab, of course the dog was friendly and happy to meet her, willingly jumping into her car to go “home.”

It wasn’t until the other dog’s owner arrived, and told us that the dog wasn’t theirs that we realized the error. We immediately contacted the other owner’s mother who brought the dog back so the right dog got to the right owner within an hour. A happy ending, but nonetheless hugely upsetting to all involved – owners and us!

In our Doggy Daycare, we used to have two Weimaraners, littermates as close to identical as two dogs can be. Even their owners couldn’t tell them apart – and since the brothers loved each other, and loved each others’ owners, everyone would laugh when they got mixed up. But this wasn’t acceptable to us, so when they were in Daycare together, we would mark the inside of an ear with a magic marker to tell them apart.

We try to learn from errors. We know mistakes will happen – we’re human, after all – but if we don’t fix the error and it happens a second time, that’s unacceptable. We immediately instituted changes to prevent this happening again, but my point in writing about it is that, no matter how much confidence you have in the facility that cares for your dog, be an informed consumer and a careful owner.

What you can do as an owner of a common breed that can be difficult to tell apart such as black or chocolate Labs, Weimaraners, even Pugs, is have them tattooed and/or microchipped. I’m a fan of tattooing, since it doesn’t require any special equipment to read (subject to breakdown), and even with a microchip reader, chips can travel in the dog’s body and be difficult to find.

As a dog owner, I can empathize with both the terror and the anger the dog’s owners felt when they discovered we had sent their dog home with someone else. I would never want anyone to go through what they and my well-intentioned staff have gone through as a result of this event. If “going public” saves an owner from this experience in the future, it’s worth it.