Milwaukee dog daycare takes heat over social media videos
MILWAUKEE - A Milwaukee dog daycare is getting heat for how it treats animals. But the owner of the daycare says the edited videos on social media do not show the whole story.
The videos were posted to social media – and concerned some like Natalie Hoskins from the Elmbrook Humane Society.
"The posturing, the chasing you know the grabbing by the collar we know is only causing more stress," Hoskins said.
Natalie Hoskins
Happy Paws' Owner Shawn Davis stands by his employees. He said the videos do not show the full story.
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"You can take any clip of anything and spin it and make it look bad. But if you hear with audio, and you get the full gist of it, you’d be like OK, I kind of getting he’s trying to get that dogs attention away from him," Davis said.
Shawn Davis
Davis said the public can access the cameras at the dog daycare 24/7 – and that transparency is important. He explained in the clips, the handlers are breaking up a dog fight. In one video, the handler got bit on the leg.
"Someone might think that’s cruel I don’t think it is because picking up that rake or squeegee opposed to the aftermath of some of these fight videos where my employees get stitched up, dogs get stitched up , I’ll take that method any day," Davis said.
Davis said the dog daycare does not invoke fear, but will do anything to intervene if the handler or dogs are in danger.
The Elmbrook Humane Society said there are better practices.
"There’s dividers that you can put in between," Hoskins said.
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Hoskins says the ratio of handler to dogs could also be improved to help manage the situation.
"Grabbing those collars -- that can be very stressful for animals and forcefully putting them in kennels. It’s just escalating that," Hoskins said.
"Going forward all we can do is educate, learn from this, and keep the cameras rolling," Davis said.