Have You Achieved Excellence?

One of the key reasons we founded The Dog Gurus was to share the components of the best off-leash playgroups we had observed.  We hate hearing about dog injuries and even deaths that result from dogs attending social playgroups as we know many of them they are preventable.  We also don’t understand why some playgroups continue to operate without human supervision.  Doesn’t everyone realize the avoidable high risk of this practice?  Keep reading if you agree our industry can improve its safety record.

Since injuries continue to happen during daycare, more needs to be done.  So we set out to to compile in one written document the best practices related to off-leash dog play.  As we pulled together current industry standards. we realized that there was an opportunity to actually raise the accepted standards of care and safety in off-leash play.

From our book Off-Leash Dog Play and Knowing Dogs staff training programs we knew many service providers joined us in wanting changes in the industry.  We saw facility owners striving for excellence and felt they should be recognized by dog owners as the leaders in our industry.  The time was right for The Dog Gurus to build a community of excellent off-leash play providers and help dog owners choose the right providers.

We know our Dog Guru Community will make a difference and lead the pet care industry in raising the bar of safety and industry standards of care.  So we made our 50+ page book of standards free to every member of The Dog Gurus.  (The Four E’s of Excellence in Off-Leash Dog Play is a FREE download available when you join!).

If you were busy when you joined our community and haven’t had a chance to download and read this book, we’re going to encourage you this month to put it on your “to do list” for the off-season.

Your free gift this month is The Four E’s Assessment Checklists which are a companion to the Four E’s of Excellence.  We challenge each of you to print the checklists, read the Four E’s and score your center’s current performance.   You will calculate an objective score and find out if your operations are below baseline, baseline or excellent.

Keep in mind that our goal is to raise the bar of safety and challenge the industry to adopt best practices.  We really don’t expect any center to score excellent today in all four categories of Environment, Dog Evaluations, Education and Excellent Operations.

However, our commitment to our members is to provide the tools, resources, training and community sharing that will allow each of you to achieve excellence.  We feel strongly that our dogs deserve nothing less than excellent care and your membership keeps us focused on helping you be among the first recognized Excellent Operators!