Hi! I'm a former employee working with AAC and I wanted to leave an honest review so customers can know about the actual in an outs of this place, seeing as you all intrusted us with providing for your furry animals.
To start I wanna say that all of the lower level employees (those directly responsible for looking after your pets, whether that be through boarding/daycare) are very caring about what they do, they have formed great bonds with every animal there and treat them the best.
The problem doesn't steam from mistreatment by the caregivers, but more so the priotization from management and also their disregard for you as customers.
I would like to bring up a point that I believe is relevent going forward, but including myself we've had around 3 other employees all quit within less than a month of one another all due to issues steaming from management.
Any policy that has been put into play with new management, never seems to be what's best for your furry animal, but more about what provides the best optics for the company.
We as employees had very little time to do many things, whether that's providing packages for your pets, that you paid good money for, giving them adequate time outside or just being able to treat them they way they should.
To start with the packages, customers have many different options for your pets when it comes to things like playtimes, cuddle sessions, etc. As a former employee there we were extremely understaffed and never, for the most part, had adequate help and or time to provide the things you paid for while keeping up "optically" for management, and there priority WAS always on the optics.
When it comes to outside time, each pet there has a bathroom break 4 times a day which works well if we have a smaller capacity load, but most of the time management pushes for max capacity bookings which is around ~70 suites. To put it in perspective we can do some math, if each one of your pets (say at full capacity with one dog per suite, which is generous, =~70 animals) were to go outside for any more than around 1-2 minutes, that puts at us about an hour and a half to 2 hours, not including time it takes to get your pet and to travel from suite to suite. If we tried to take the dogs out for more than 2 minutes (which every animal here deserves to be outside for more than 2 minutes at a time) we could end up around anywhere from 2 1/2 hours to 4, and with 2 potties per shift that in itself can be almost our entire 8 hour shift. But with our attention needed else places, as management is very stern on, we stick with the 1-2 minute time period with dogs, unless we were operating at a much lower capacity, then we usually had more time for each dog. But besides that, around 8 minutes of outside time per dog per day at full-ish capacity, I believe that to be completely unacceptable.
When it comes to treatment in general many dogs that went there were in a variety of moods, some didn't mind the stay, while others were very anxious/terrified, we as CAREGIVERS never had the time to spend with your pets, we didn't have the time to sit with you animals, let them warm up to us, or just in general try to find a way to comfort our guests. Everything we did there felt very cold and calculated so we could get the most done for the day.
On top of all of this management was very aware of how we as employees felt and did very little to appease us or the pets. I knew of a few employees during my time there that were very vocal about many things, whether that be in meetings or just through talks, that were always ignored or shut down, or hit with the occasional "things will change" which never seemed to happen. This was my biggest reason for leaving and it sucks. I enjoyed spending time with the animals and building a connection with them, but as new management moved in that just seemed like a part of my job that was slowly taken away.
I hope anyone reading this takes into consideration what I had to say, also know that it's not how things always were there, any time we only had a few dogs staying with us we had more than enough time, but anytime we got more and more dogs, we never got the extra help we needed. Usually only one person per shift to handle all of the dogs, cleanings, dinners, etc. like i said during my time there we were already short staffed and management made very little effort to move new employees in and after my departure I'd be more than sure that the status quo hasn't changed.
If anyone has any questions, which I'm not sure if yelp has that, I'd be more than willing to answer below. I left this place in the past for a reason and maybe some of you should too. read more