UPDATE (28 Dec): 3 more alleged cases of mistreatment involving Platinium Dogs Club have surfaced. We talk about them in detail here.
Going overseas on a holiday is challenging for all fur parents. Finding a trustworthy someone to babysit your pets when you’re away is even tougher.
A local dog-boarding service has come under fire twice over the past week. At least 2 dissatisfied customers took to Facebook to share their “horrifying” experiences with the service over the Christmas holiday.
Here are the posts detailing their experiences in full. Animal-lovers may find some of the content and images within the post disturbing.
First, the case involving a Shih Tzu.
And 5 days later, yet another featuring a Chow Chow.
We look into both cases in detail after the jump.
Ms Yong claims she made a last minute booking for her Shih Tzu, Pika, to be housed in a private bedroom for 5 days.
She bought into the promise that Platinium Dogs Club wouldn’t “cage up” their dogs, and that the staff would “bring them (for) walks”.
Rachel, who represented the club, assured Ms Yong of the club’s practices, after which both proceeded to discuss the price.
Once Ms Yong had transferred the first half of the fee, she thanked Rachel for accepting her request so close to the boarding date.
A day after leaving Pika in the boarding house, Ms Yong, like any concerned pet owner, asked how he was doing.
Rachel assured Ms Yong that Pika was happy and healthy, and sent over a few videos of the dog relaxing on the floor.
On the final day of the boarding, Rachel told Ms Yong that she will send Pika home around 8pm.
Just before Pika was set to arrive home, Rachel told Ms Yong that he had gone for a walk in the rain after showering, and was all wet again.
To which Ms Yong expressed concern — that Pika might be brought home dripping wet.
But Rachel told her that she already had the Shih Tzu blow dried.
His genitals were also bleeding, with pus still coming out of the wounds.
When she questioned Rachel about the injuries, the dog sitter casually brushed it off saying that she hadn’t noticed them while showering Pika just a few hours ago.
Ms Yong made further attempts to reach Rachel, but was met with what every indignant person hates meeting most — silence.
5 days later, another Facebook post by one Ms Loo surfaced accusing the same boarding house of mistreating her friend’s Chow Chow.
This was how the Chow Chow looked like before entering the boarding house — a thick coat of clean honey-coloured fur.
And this was allegedly how he looked after returning from it.
His fur coat was damp, dark and dirty. One user suggested that it might have been because he had been resting and soaking in his own urine and faeces for days at the boarding house.
The suggestion seemed hardly implausible because when the owners shaved him, they discovered to great horror, that his skin was severely inflamed.
The inflammation and rash ran all along the bottom side of the poor dog’s body and then up to the neck.
There was also what seemed like a sizable lesion at his mouth.
Platinium Dogs Club, the target of the allegations, has since taken down their website.
Ms Yong however managed to take screenshots of the page and posted them along with the pictures of her Shih Tzu.
The people behind the club also claimed to have “more than 20 years of experience”.
A number of users commented that they had left their dogs at Platinium Dogs Club before, and most of them shared similar bad experiences.
One user recounted that the boarding house representative inquired about the payment and nothing about the dog — raising suspicions that he/she did not actually care about the animal. The owner’s suspicions were later confirmed when her dog came back “more crippled” after 2 days.
Another also complained that his dog returned from the boarding house damp with urine and faeces.
And another.
There are plenty of other complaints, but we’ll stop at 3.
If the claims are all legitimate, we find it incredulous how such a boarding house could have continued doing business for so long.
One user suggested that maybe when the complaints pile up, the owners could possibly close the service and restart it with a new name, thus repeating the cycle.
Finally for one user, a boarding house experience with Platinium Dogs Club ended in tragedy. Her sister’s dog had allegedly died after being placed in their care.
Her post was set to private but was re-shared in the comments section.
If the allegations are found to be true, the people or person behind Platinium Dog Club should definitely be punished.
As it is, it’s sometimes very difficult to ascertain if a certain dog sitter is good or not. Dog owners should therefore always make sure to read reviews before settling on a boarding house.
Hopefully the dog owners will get to the bottom of the matter, and authorities will find some way of clamping down on such irresponsible boarding houses.
Featured image from Facebook and Facebook.
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