Hampden Dog Care Makes Do Sans Power

Jo Anne Garrett, the owner of Good Doggie Day Care, said the power outage on Monday was actually “more fun than usual” for the dogs.

“Anything that’s different, they enjoy,” she said, referring to the windows being open during the outage and the extra time the dogs are spending outside.

The dogs—there were 49 on Monday—have been spending a lot of time outside in the facility’s large backyard, which has a playground.

Garrett said the only real issue has been cleaning up the huge amount of leaves that flew into the backyard during the storm.

Other than that, “it’s been just about a regular Monday,” said Garrett.

The dogs are separated into three groups: small, medium and large. On a day like today, when the dark indoors are a bit less pleasant for the dogs, they try to rotate the three groups’ time spent outside. Each group spends about 20 minutes running around outside on a playground that looks like one made for children. 

“When pickup time comes around, it’s still going to be light outside, so that’ll be OK," Garrett said. "And for our dogs staying here overnight, we have camper’s lanterns.”