More and more dogs are going to daycare. Some are even picked up by the school bus (or dog van) near their home first thing in the morning and delivered back in the middle of the afternoon. This is provided that they and their owner or guardian have successfully passed the prior interview and adaptation period required by most centers.
“It's like school; We pick them up - the first pick-up in Barcelona is around 7.30 in the morning and we have two different routes - and we take them to a fenced green space of 3,500 square meters in Maresme where they spend the day running, playing (in summer in the pool) and making friends, because some coincide on the same days; and between 4:30 and 6 in the afternoon we returned to the city and left them at the stop where we picked them up,” summarizes Josep Maria Ribas, founder and director of Dog Day Camp.
And he explains that there is a high demand for this type of services. In his case, he started the business alone, with a van, in May 2021, and today he already has two Doggy Vans and four people work in the center.
María José Martínez, owner of Barcelona Dog Care, and Gloria, monitor of Animal Solution, in Madrid, also attest that taking the dog to daycare is a booming practice that has grown significantly after the pandemic. “We are a small daycare center with family-friendly treatment and we only accept ten dogs, and we are almost always full because there is a lot of demand,” summarizes Martínez, who opened his center in 2019.
Those in charge of all the daycare centers consulted agree that the most common client profile is that of someone who works all day and does not have support or does not want to create obligations for other family members to take care of their dog but does not want the animal be alone all day.
“There is a bar owner who brings her dog every day because she leaves the house at 6 in the morning and doesn't return until 7 in the afternoon,” exemplifies the owner of Barcelona Dog Care.
There are also animals who go to the daycare only two or three days a week and the rest stay at home because someone in the family works remotely. And there are those who go sporadically, a few hours a week, because what they want is to socialize with other dogs, exercise, or suffer from separation anxiety if the owner has to leave them to go do some errands.
“What the pull of these businesses shows is that people are becoming aware of the true needs of a dog, they worry about their well-being and, when they cannot take care of it, they seek help and invest to ensure that it will be well,” he says. Paula Calvo, ethologist, antrozoologist and director of Antrozoología.com.
Investing is not a minor issue, because the price ranges between 18 and 35 euros per day, depending on the daycare, although you may end up paying a little less if you buy vouchers for several days or if the dog attends regularly and is pay by months. In this case, the monthly payments range from 260 to 450 euros, depending on the services and facilities offered by each center.
In response to those who see taking the dog to a daycare as frivolity, an excess of humanization and another manifestation of the culture of perrijos (dogs treated as children), Calvo emphasizes that “it is a sign that we are evolving and expanding our empathy.” because the dog is a social, group animal, and cannot be alone for 8, 10 or 12 hours.”
He adds that “a few decades ago these services were not necessary because the dogs were practically never alone at home because the mother or grandmother was always there; but now that is not the case and the dog needs to socialize, and not only with humans, but also with other peers, and come into contact with nature and run.”
For this reason, it is considered that going to these canine centers or daycare centers, in addition to providing peace of mind to the animal's guardians, means physical and mental health for the animal. “If the dog socializes and plays, you will have a healthier, more balanced dog, and when you get home you will have a calmer interaction with him, which is what you want when you return from work,” says the anthrozoologist.
“Every day, around 11 in the morning, we send a video to families so they can see what their animal is doing; The dogs enjoy it a lot because we have all sizes and breeds and that helps them to be in a pack; And since they do a lot of exercise, when we take them back they are tired, they fall asleep during the trip in the van, and people repeat bringing them because they see that their animal is much more relaxed at home" and they enjoy coexistence more, he agrees. Ribas, from Dog Day Camp.
The proliferation of all these canine services is not a casual or anecdotal phenomenon. Sociologists and psychologists assure that it is due to a radical transformation of social relations resulting from the digital and hyper-individualized society in which we live.
Eduardo Bericat, professor of Sociology at the University of Seville and researcher of emotions and social values, explains that many people who take their dog to daycare do not do so just out of necessity, because they have no one to leave it with, but rather thinking about the emotional well-being of the dog and its education, as is done with children, “which gives an idea of a bond between the person and the dog that is almost paternal-filial in nature.”
And he emphasizes that dogs are not only considered another member of the family, "but they appear in the photos occupying the central position and being recipients of all the gazes and affections of the rest of the family members."
He believes that this is because human-dog relationships are very satisfactory, less problematic and tumultuous than those with other people, and better adapted to the idiosyncrasies of today's society. "The dog demands service and sacrifice because it entails an expense in time and money, but its relationship is simple, predictable and compensates, it offers us loyalty and fidelity, it projects the bond every time it welcomes us with joy when we arrive home," he reflects. Bericat.
Psychologist Rafael San Román points out that this involvement, this putting dogs at the center of everything, is still an act of certain selfishness because a dog does not entail as much sacrifice nor is it as stressful as, for example, children. “Taking care of a dog is like taking care of a baby for years, it is rewarding, and the care they need and the relationship that is established are stable, they do not become more complex or the coexistence more conflictive as they grow as it does with dogs. children,” he says.
Luis Ayuso, an expert in Family Sociology, believes that the transition from an agricultural and service society to a digital society has made the family stop being a productive unit where children had value and become an emotional unit and, “When we move in the emotional sphere, we can project that emotionality on the children but also on the animals, which are always happy to see you and fill very well that emotional need that human beings have.”
Hence, there is a decrease in the human birth rate and an increase in the canine birth rate and, in Spain, the number of registered dogs now exceeds that of those under 14 years of age by almost three million. “It is not a passing fad but rather a structural trend that points to a radical transformation of human sociability, that is, the way we inhabit the world by relating to other people and other species,” comments Bericat.
In this framework, it is increasingly common to anthropomorphize the dog, to attribute human qualities to it. The ethologist and anthrozoologist Paula Calvo assures that “anthropomorphizing allows us to understand that they can feel, suffer, be happy...; “It facilitates empathy with animals and has allowed domestication.”
Bericat, from the field of sociology, explains that by anthropomorphizing the dog “we raise its moral value until it matches the emotional value” that is given to it today. "We could say that we rationalize our behaviors, because if the dog did not have the moral value that we assign to it, much of the human attention that some people dedicate to their dogs would be judged as totally irrational, something that flies over the minds of many when they see a dog dressed in fashion, carried in a baby stroller, or sitting on a couch in daycare,” he details.
And turning the relationship with the dog into a substitute or complement to social relationships with family, friends and colleagues, says Bericat, is transforming human sociability and giving rise to the emergence of new concepts such as dogs or multispecies families.
“We are in a transition phase in a society with a plurality of family forms where none of them is hegemonic, and the multispecies family is another that is now added to that existing diversity, making the ways in which we decide to relate more complex and autonomous” , concludes the sociologist.
In this sense, Calvo points out that more and more people demand to be able to bring their dog to the office or request to telework to spend more time with them. "When discussing family conciliation, we talk about how the feeling of guilt for not being able to take care of the child or the partner takes its toll in terms of anxiety or depression, because it has been proven to occur, and in multispecies families that guilt is transferred to the of not being able to take care of the dog or the cat, so the fact that there are services that help with this conciliation relieves guilt and reassures," says the anthrozoologist.
The advance of multispecies families is also noticeable in the vocabulary. Those who work in these canine services refer to the owners of the animals as their guardians, as their 'human daddies or mommies' or simply as 'their humans', avoiding at all times talking about "owners" or "masters."
