Zac & Reg Get Their Dog On At Holdfast Dog Centre!

You should know by now that we are animal people! I have my furry feline fools (Doris & Mr Pyjamas) and Mummy Ask has Zac & Reg the wonder dogs. Zac & Reg were adopted from SA Dog Rescue (read all about it here) and are as sweet as buttons! Honestly, they couldn’t be more awesome and we couldn’t love them more (we even made them a custom dog bed)! Of course they have their quirks (you just never know what happened to them before), they can be shy and worried and freaked out by things. So Mummy Ask took things at their pace, seeing how the reacted to different things and reassuring them. They learned the neighborhood noises, got used to rides in the car and got to know the family that visits.

Just because they’re brothers, you can’t expect them to be the same about everything. Zac loves to watch over the neighborhood from the window and prove how brave he is when vacuuming is happening. Reg tends to watch everything carefully from a distance with a worried look. And when it comes to walkies, Zac is off to sniff everything and wants to run but Reg gives looks like he’s being forced into a PE lesson! Mum tried a single lead for each dog, a splicer lead and we have tried taking one each. But it was clear they need to run and play and make doggy friends. We talked about it and Mum was looking for a place to take them. The local dog park has a fence made of bars and we know they can fit through the gap and escape!

I said I’d Google and see what I could find. Pretty quickly, I found gold – The Holdfast Dog Centre. Their website has tonnes of info but I’ll go through some info here. Holdfast dog centre is a membership group, $25/per household per year, regardless of how many people or dogs. But before you pay you can see how your dogs like it by making an appointment for visitor Friday’s (most days are doggy daycare/dog training although there are times when you can come and use the space too). We rang and spoke with Karen and made an appointment to see how the dogs went with things. 

The Dog Centre is made up of a large, main yard that is fully fenced and has shade areas.  This is where most things (doggy daycare etc) are happening. There’s a smaller yard (fully fenced with shade) that has a gate to the main yard and a gate to the foyer type area. The foyer area has several gates (like air locks) to make sure no one gets out accidentally!

When we arrived,  Zac & Reg were very unsure of all the clanking gates! I think it reminded them of their time spent in kennels. Karen met us in the foyer and ushered us into the small yard, just the three humans and Zac & Reg. On that day there were about 50 small dogs in the main yard and many were right up against the fence, curious about Zac & Reg. Karen observed the boys for a while and spoke with us about the centre. After a while, she said ‘Let’s see who wants to come in’ and selected a few dogs to join the boys. Karen supervised and we weren’t worried, even at a couple of growly moments. Karen advised us to come back next week and see if we couldn’t get them into the main yard. We went home and paid our membership (we had been to our free consult and decided to come back) and started on a new feeding and training regime, suggested by Karen.