Downtown Dogs Reviews

Downtown Dogs treated their young and capable employees like unintelligent children. The owners, Kelly and Mark, would likely hire toddlers if it were legal to keep them working on minimum wage. The lack of regard to employee and dog safety was abhorrent. One teenager would be left to manage 50+ large dogs alone. This is far from what is advertised to clients. The push for money from regularly attending dogs was so strong that non-social dogs (who would regularly draw blood on other dogs and employees) would be allowed to join daycare and have to be rotated on 5, 10, or 15-minute timers with several other dogs that they have had issues with. These dogs would still be allowed out in the group for daycare, because that is what the clients paid for. Money over the safety of the animals and humans. During training, they teach you to scream as loud as you can so someone at the front desk or in the small dog room might hear and be able to assist during a dog fight. You are taught to interfere with your body and given no tools to keep yourself safe. Employees are allowed to pick the play group rooms to work in based on seniority, leaving unequipped but "graduated" new hires in a room full of difficult to manage large dogs. The company owners fired two employees after speaking out after they had been bitten and required medical attention, when refusing to work with a certain dog that attended regularly. This was the same dog, two different employees. This dog was only "fired" after seriously injuring another dog that attended regularly. The owners were found to have not been paying their employees their overtime hours, nor their lunch time required to be spent on premises. Each employee received several thousand in missed wages. Before this issue had been brought to the owners by a legal professional, all questions regarding potential missed wages were met with denial and threats to job stability.

The dogs are poorly selected, meaning the owners of this business are just out for every penny they can get. This results in some aggressive, or otherwise dogs that just aren't suitable for being in big groups, being accepted into daycare. Hence, you have regular scuffles breaking out between dogs and minor injuries to employees occurring regularly. Myself and several other people were bitten during our time there and several dogs were kicked out in the year I worked there. Also, Mark and Kelly are legitimate con artists and they choose to hire younger people for a reason, that being so they can pull the wool over your eyes and take money that you rightfully earned if you're not paying attention. As I was employed, one employee reviewed his check and realized that he wasn't being paid overtime. He was missing several hundred dollars over the course of MONTHS working there and when he found this out and told the other employees, many more calculated their overtime and found that they were being ripped off in the same way. This resulted in Mark and Kelly paying back everyone who was not paid for their overtime. They are unethical and happy to take advantage of their young, dedicated staff to put more money in their own pockets. They will also work you as hard as they can get away with and disregard your availability. I asked for 15-20 hours and they put me on for 30-35 on average. Also, Kelly can be very catty if you're a young woman. She made several catty remarks to me like a high school girl in my time there. Once I came to work with no makeup and my hair not done and she looked me up and down and said, "You look so different today. Probably because you don't have all that make up on and your hair is flat". So on top of being greedy, she's takes jabs at younger women to feel better about herself. Pathetic and beyond unprofessional.