At Ottawa’s Dog World, there’s no such thing as a snow day

Paralyzed, but peacefully.  

It’s probably the most appropriate descriptor of Ottawa in the midst of a snow storm. From Tuesday night, when the first blast of snow hit until Wednesday evening when it finally seems like it was over, the city was virtually frozen in place. It was a true, classical snow day, the stuff of Canadiana myth: kids were called off school; government workers largely stayed home as instructed by their bosses; the mailmen stopped delivering the mail. “Hintonburg is extra neighbourly today,” tweeted Ash Deathe. “Many neighbours dug out intersections and stuck cars.  Nice stranger is walking down the street with a snowblower helping clear sidewalks.”

It was the kind of snow day that leaves many people stranded from their work, a surprise moment to breath in the middle of the work week. The kind of snow day every schoolchild hopes for.

It is also the kind of snow storm that buries this reporter’s 2002 Camry, which is already characteristically choosy about whether it feels like starting up and getting itself out of the snow, buried under a foot and a half of snow in a parking lot that (given a quick and informal survey of the other drivers in the lot) is notoriously tedious in the winter.

And all of this happened on the day when said reporter’s assignment was to drive out to the far west end of the city to profile Dog World, a unique dog kennel where, instead of being kept inside for much of the day, the dogs are encouraged to run free with dozens of other dogs, on a large and sprawling property with over 50 acres of trailway. The kind of kennel where they see the task at hand (in this case, dog boarding) through a fundamentally different lens: letting dogs be dogs.

Snow day, schmo day. Kim Holden, the owner of Dog World, was up before dawn, heading out to the kennel to check on the dogs. All of her staff, she said in a pre-dawn email, were buried and would be late. Since dogs care little for excuses, Holden was on duty.

“I actually started to prepare yesterday,” said Holden, later in the day. “I had the maintenance person make sure that the generator was accessible for backup power, that we always had  fresh water and heat accessible. You really don’t know what’s going to happen with high winds, or excessive amounts of snow, or any other weather.”

Dealing with a snow day as a dog boarder, however, is more about staff management than dog management. Dogs enjoy snow days just like people do. “The dogs are fine,” says Holden. “They don’t even notice. They just think it’s extra fun for them.”

Plus, Holden has pretty much seen it all. 29 years ago, she bought a property on Carp Road. Holden bought it when she was 18, after her family moved to British Columbia. “Instead of driving my motorcycle out to meet my family at the end of the summer I purchased this property and started breeding Rottweilers, so that’s where the care of dogs came into play,” says Holden. “I always wanted animals, knew I wanted to do something with that as my career.”

Caring for dogs was, for a long time, a side hustle. “I took on a job as a rural mail driver and in the meantime would start caring for dogs here on the property,” she says. About seven years ago she was able to turn the dog business into her sole business.

Dog World is like an all-inclusive resort, but for dogs. There’s a day care service, a day boarding service, grooming, training — everything except retail, says Holden. That’s unique in the dog boarding market, where most places specialize in one thing. And then there’s the facilities that the dogs are kept in. There’s 8 separate fenced-in dog parks, where dogs of different energy levels can socialize. Three months out of the year, there is a waterpark for the dogs to play in. Next year there will be an in-ground pool for the dogs.

Holden says that providing all those facilities is part of the way Dog World sees the task differently. Whereas most kennels require meet and greets with the dog, and will regularly refuse dogs that are aggressive or overbearing, Dog World takes pretty much any dog that’s dropped off at their door. (And dogs are regularly dropped off at their door for the day, says Holden.)

“Given the right environment and the right handlers, a dog can actually thrive more here than they do in their own environment,” says Holden. “We just take dogs. It doesn’t matter what your history was or what its history was, what happens as soon as you hand over the leash, it’s a unique difference. The dogs learn to adapt to this environment. … That is not what everyone’s doing.”

Holden says that in their daycare alone, they can have as many as 900 to 1,000 dogs come through every month. Some of those dogs are brought in via a shuttle bus that the company runs. Getting to spend your days exercising outside with that many dogs is what many people would call a dream job. Holden knows how lucky she is. “To me, it is a dream job, but a 24/7 dream job,” she says. “I’m up at one in the morning when they’re plowing, then I get up at five to see if there’s too much snow…It has its perks. We get to play with the dogs all day, and entertain them, make them so happy — and then the customers are happy.”

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You can contact Dog World through their website, www.dogworld-bedrockkennels.com

Got an idea for a business profile? Send it to Kieran at kieran@ottawamatters.com