Lilly, the Basset Hound, has been coming to the Pampered Pooch Playground for over 3 years, and enjoys hanging out in the Canine Cove. Summer is one of her favorite months because she gets to sunbath in our outdoor play area, and play with the sprinkler. One of Lilly’s talents is “show me your belly”, where she rolls over on her back with her feet up in the air (check out our photo gallery for a picture of Lilly doing this). Lilly is also a regular in the PPP hotel and her parents love to watch her on the luxury suite webcam. Each day when Lilly comes in her dad gives her a carrot before she gets to go see all of her friends! We love Lilly and glad she is part of the PPP family!
Lilly
The PPP Kickball Team
I often think back to when I was working in radio and how we were treated by the management and owners of the station. At the station I worked at in Minneapolis, it was a locally owned station, the owners knew your name and everyone really enjoyed working there and they always had fun events for the staff. Prior to working in Minneapolis, I worked for the largest group of radio stations in the country. Working for them did have some benefits, but you were honestly treated like a number and hard work was very rarely rewarded. We never want to turn into this. I often think back to when we first opened and we had 4 employees and from day 1 we always tried to make working at PPP fun and rewarding. We have chosen to run our doggy daycare like the station I worked for in Minneapolis. We really do value all of our employees and love having fun outside of work with everyone. This summer we put together a PPP kickball team with employees. Tonight was our second game and we won! We really do have fun outside of the PPP!
Have a good night.
Keith
Wednesday, August 29th – Bubble Bath Party
Join us at Bubbly Paws Dog Wash at Excelsior and Grand in St Louis Park for a Bubble Bath Party for Retrieve A Golden of Minnesota. All self service baths form 5:30-8pm are $15 and $5 is donated to the rescue. In addition There will be $5 nail trims and 15% off all retail items. Click Here for more information and to reserve your space.
Wednesday, June 27th – Bubble Bath Party
Join us at Bubbly Paws Dog Wash at Excelsior and Grand in St Louis Park for a Bubble Bath Party for The Pet Project. All self service baths form 5:30-8pm are $15 and $5 is donated to the rescue. In addition There will be $5 nail trims and 15% off all retail items. Click Here for more information and to reserve your space.
Saturday, June 16th – St Louis Park – Parktacular
Join Bubbly Paws Dog Wash and Pampered Pooch Playground at the 2012 St. Louis Park Parktacular event at Wolfe Park from 2-6pm. We will be sponsoring adoptable dogs from the Humane Society. We are proud to be a small, locally owned business located in St Louis Park. For more information click here.
Friday, May 11th – Spring Photo Session
Join Modern Life Photo in our training room on Friday, May 11th for a spring photo session with your pooch. Click Here for more details and to reserve your space.
Saturday, June 9th – GreyFest
Pampered Pooch Playground is proud to support the Greyhound Pets of America – MN and GreyFest 2012 at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Click here for more information.
AAA Magazine
Pampered Pooch Playground was featured in the AAA Living magazine as one of the “Must Visit” dog places in Minneapolis. 
Dog Friendly Patios
Summer is patio season in Minneapolis and we have put together a list of some of our favorite dog friendly restaurants and bars in the Twin Cities. Click Here to see the list.
The Outdoor Oops… Well Kinda!
Max the doodle was one of the first doggy daycare dogs to see the new outside play area.
2 years ago we were the first dog daycare to use recycled turf in our outside play area and we LOVE it. Here are the problems with the other types of surfaces commonly used at doggy daycare:
Pea Sized Gravel – The most common but rocks fly everywhere when dogs run and many dog love to eat the rocks. Rocks are very dusty and dogs go home really dirty.
Wood chips – They hold smell (think how many dogs go to the bathroom on them everyday). You can’t clean them because cleaning solution soaks into the wood chips. Plus they smell really bad when they are wet.
Regular grass – Pretty obvious why this is not a good option.. You can never clean it, dogs get dirty and muddy anytime there is rain or you play with the hose and grass never grows because dogs are always running on it.
We LOVE our recycled turf, it comes from an old sports stadium and fits in well with us trying to be a “green” doggy daycare. The turf hold up great and we just wanted to freshen up the look of what we had outside. When the guys were almost done installing the turf, they realized someone had mis-measured, so we did not have enough to do the whole area. So there is a small corner that is not finished yet. I guess everyone learned the lesson of Measure 10 times and order 1 time 
Not big deal, it should be 100% finished by the end of the week. I was out there when the dogs first saw the new turf today and they LOVED it. I am so glad we went with this option 2 years ago because I could not imagine sending home really muddy, or super dirty dogs.
Have a good night.
Keith
