An Interview with WagWorks London
WagWorks is a membership club for dogs, offering holistic canine care to its members: daycare, healthcare, grooming & training. With a range of best-in-class professionals on site from daycare assistants to veterinarians & behaviourists they partner with their clients and assist them with all aspects of dog care.
We speak to the team about where the inspiration behind WagWorks came from and their favourite spots in London for a dog walk.
What was the inspiration behind opening a Doggy Day Care in London?
Given the recent humanisation of dogs, we knew we had to create a new quality of care that reflects the love we have for our very own treasured four-legged friends. Our idea behind WagWorks was to deliver a new style of canine care that enhances all aspects of the lives of urban dogs. We worked for years developing the concept, speaking to as many professionals as we could to ensure our design and daily operations were built with canine needs at the forefront of everything. We’ve used state of the art design, ranging from curved walls to avoid face-to-face confrontation between dogs, specially formulated grass with cutting edge drainage systems for hygiene. Another big part of our inspiration was convenience, we wanted to ensure people could drop their dog off on the way to work, or on the way to their yoga class and so our locations are strategically placed near transport hubs and inner city parks.
Tell us about the Wellbeing, Educational and Training Services you offer.
Our training services look mainly into what we call ‘life-skills’ over ‘trick’ training. Life-skills are skills that we deem essential to live a happy & safe life in an urban environment, such as exceptional recall & waiting at the roadside. Our behavioural sessions involve deep diving into the dog’s history and day-to-day life, to find the root cause of the issue, rather than just dealing with the presenting symptom.
Wellbeing to us is a happy & balanced dog and that is at the heart of all our services: our daycare is designed around the ethogram of the dog, providing them with outlets for all their innate behaviours, allowing them to simply ‘be a dog’ and our in-house Veterinarian team perform routine monthly preventative health checks to ensure we’re one step ahead of any potential emerging problems & keeping them in optimum health.
Our favourite place to go for a walk is Wimbledon Common. Ample space & endless routes to explore, every walk is different! Plus, it’s so close! It’s especially beautiful at this time of year!
What exciting plans do you have for the coming year?
We are launching our grooming service in the New Year! We can’t wait to show our members! Grooming isn’t every dog’s favourite activity but it’s a necessity for their health and wellbeing. We pride ourselves in taking things slow with every groom & giving enrichment breaks to make sure they’re as happy as possible throughout. Secondly, we’re broadening our horizons and hoping to land WagWorks Site 2 later on in the year and will follow that with our first rural site.
