From Tears and Tantrums to Titanesses-to-Be

We met a wonderful hero today. He has pledged to take up our cause, to charge into the den of frustration and obstruction, and to help us to be victorious.

After yet another delay, which came in the form of a late spate of questions from the Building Department, most of which were on subjects already addressed or inappropriate to our application, we finally called on some help.

Dr Duncan Milloy was introduced to us in a welcome letter from the mayor of Kirkland as an advocate for businesses focusing on business retention. But I told him our story anyway, my voice quavering with frustration, and when he'd heard our litany of issues, he volunteered to come to our site immediately to review our concerns and provide us with advice and direction. He was here within 15 minutes.

With his reassurance that we are truly doing everything correctly, we were able to refocus and respond to the questions posed, confident that the end result will be positive and forthcoming.

Dr Milloy's approach is decidedly genteel, intelligent, respectful and thoughtful, and he has offered to be our advocate and intermediary if ever we cannot speak for ourselves. He is our hero.

Calling on the Fates, and Readers

Today is the day we learn whether - or how much of - our permit application will be approved by the City of Kirkland.

This has already been a harrowing process, leaving us feeling at times like we're playing pinball, but we're the pinballs being bounced around for someone's amusement; at other times we seem to be playing pin the tail on the donkey, and the donkey keeps kicking; or it could be musical chairs, and we're really  not sure whether, after all this dizzying and exhausting running around, there will be a place to settle.

Two weeks ago, we submitted our application to install a laundry area, a 6' high fence around the dog play area and a rain garden to filter the storm runoff to the neighboring "wetland" (populated by old tires and rusty something or other). We have reduced our outdoor dog play area to accommodate the 10' setback requirements (our neighbor is a pipe warehouse); we've upgraded our interior fencing gates to be wheelchair accessible. We think we've answered every concern the City could possibly have, but we're simple businesswomen, not contractors. We've never experienced the maze that is the Planning Dept/Dept of Public Works/and ... who else? It seemed they had a neverending supply of hoops for us to jump through. Today we find out if there are any more.

My fear is that the eight parking spaces we have will be deemed inadequate. (Although that would be unreasonable, as we will have more parking spaces here than most if not all other Doggy Daycares in King County.) But we are located on a major thoroughfare, so there is no on-street parking. We've paid for people to sit for four hours, over two days, and count the traffic at a comparable doggy daycare, and then to sit in our neighbor's parking lot for four hours, over two days and count traffic in their parking lot. And we're now paying the City's Traffic Engineer to generate an analysis of the data. And if he feels we must have more parking spaces, we're delayed again while we redesign our rain garden to accommodate whatever number he comes up with, reducing even further our dog play space. Oh, the anxiety!

Please, Fates, help them to find in our favor. We've been good girls. We've tried so hard to be nice, to be accommodating. And to all you readers out there, please wish us luck.

Interior Fencing - DONE!

Who knew some chain link fences could be so incredibly exciting?!

For Stina and me, this lovely stuff is the proof that the dream is coming true, that the vision can be made into a reality.

This fencing is powder coated with the glossiest black, and only 3 feet high, with swing gates designed for ease of access for humans, but the dogs will be well contained, visible, safe, and I hope they will enjoy the cool factor of designer black gloss powder coated steel.

Here's the entry gate. It works a lot like the airlock in a spaceship. First you get the dog inside the door, and once the door is closed, open the gate. No escapes, no unwanted or uncontrolled meetings.

The "fire hydrant" you see is purely decorative, and will soon be moved into our back or side garden, which will be installed as soon as the City of Kirkland is able to approve our permit applications. (Maybe Friday??)  

These fences will be augmented by a system of  "ex-pens" (exercise pens) that can be moved in mere moments, and as easily rearranged into oblongs, ovals, or long stretches which are supported by Triangles of Power (to maintain their verticality). Ex-pens work well to subdivide the spaces into lively dog / quiet dog, big dog / small dog spaces. You can see one which had been in use earlier, but is now set aside - Biscuit, the mop toward the right side of the runway pictured, is guarding it.

Biscuit Sits

This is one of Biscuit's favorite spots - we've put two dog beds down along the back wall of our office for Biscuit and Rosie. This is how Biscuit sits and watches while I'm working on my computer.

Mojo and Buddy

Eric O. comes to the Scampers Family with Mojo and Buddy. They look like they'll fit right in!

The Power of a Decorated Fleet!

We met two new friends on Friday, because of our car art!

First was Amy J, who found us having a bite to eat outside Panera in Redmond. She recognized us by the two dogs at our feet. She'd spotted the car parked a few yards away, and was excited to read about a nearby Doggy Daycare. She has a large Labradoodle who needs some social time. I'm hoping we'll see him at our Grand Opening.

An hour later, in Overlake, we met Diane. She was parked next to us, and when we emerged from the shop, she asked about Scampers location. It seems her Mojo needs a place like Scampers for the occasional half-day while Diane plays MahJong.
Way to go, Karen of Stripe Graphics, and Joel and the team at Olympic Reprographics - Thanks for doing such a great job!

And Diane and Amy, we look forward to seeing you again soon.

Flooring Woes (Whoa's?)

Oh, Dear! Oh, Woe is Scampers new floor. Scampers new floor is Whoa'd.

When Stina found that gorgeous Black with 17% Lipstick Red Fleck recycled rubber flooring, we were thrilled! To bits!

5000 square feet of recycled rubber flooring is a rather large order, so we were not too concerned to learn that the order had been split between two separate factories, having been reassured that the colors would be a perfect match.

When Tran arrived and rolled nine massive rolls of 50' long rubber off the back of the truck into our loading bay, I was excited, if a little frightened - for Tran as well as for our new rubber. When the second fellow arrived the next day with two pallets, each with 16 rolls of 25' long rubber, something seemed a little off. But! The boys were going to come and install them on Sunday. Yippee!

12 hours of work by two hard-working men, who installed flooring into the hardest most complicated corners, followed by 12 hours of work by two hard-working old broads, who wrestled with the stickiest blackest goo you can imagine to seal the seams, and what do we discover? One guess! The two factories sent us floor of two different thicknesses! We almost had a 1/8" step in our floors!



1/4 Inch - Not right



3/8" - The Right Stuff



And not only that, of the 32 rolls of the wrong stuff, which is the first stuff we'd used, 11 were completely unusable because their edges so badly ruffled they  looked like they could be made into flamenco costumes.

Well, this morning, the first call Stina made was to the rubber flooring company. They're going to make it right. Well, I know they will, but will they reinstall the new shipment? Will they do the caulking? Oh, I sure hope so, because we are truly tuckered out now and can't even imagine ripping this floor up starting all over again.

Rosie and Biscuit like it. We're a little less happy with it.

Flooring Underway!

Okay - once the flooring arrived (it came in two instalments from two different suppliers arriving on two different days), we were finally able to start the installation.

Gregg and Eric got to work, and boy, it turns out that laying this stuff is really hard work.

Cutting angles and corners in dense rubber flooring, to make it fit perfectly.

Fun Times with City Halt

As sent to Sarah:

Originally, we had planned to open this coming Monday. Actually, we had planned to have a Grand Opening Open House tonight, even, but we've run into the quagmire of the City of Kirkland. We were expecting to have a challenge with the King County Board of Health, as we are the first dog daycare to open since they rewrote their regulations on animal care and kennels, but other than a couple of rather over the top requirements (double-bag the poop?!) that we were able to handle, they've been great. On the other hand, the permitting process through the City of Kirkland has been more of a by-guess and by-golly experience for us. We've had several of our contractors exclaim that the City staffers must be using our application to keep themselves busy, as they really don't have any other new applications coming through the door while the economy has been so poor. So we're their entertainment, paying fee after fee, when we could be open, hiring tax paying citizens, and being a tax paying business... Today, we submit our revised and improved application, with every single requirement addressed and proven. Wish us luck.

Whoo Hooo! New Logo-Wear for Scampers Folks

We received our special, logotized togs today. Oh, we're gonna look soooo special! Stina's favorite is the denim apron, but for me, the fleecy jacket is fabulous. Kudos to Instant Imprints - quick, perfect, fun to do business with.

Oh, A Pox upon the Teens Mucking up Epoxy Paint!

Sarah's scraping the carpet glue off the concrete in preparation for our new rubber flooring.
The three teens, Sarah, Katrina and Blake, did a lot of hard, ugly, messy work and we were grateful.

The King County Board of Health recommends painting the bottom 48" of all our walls with  epoxy paint.

$600 later, we hired ourselves a "work crew" of summer-bored kids. Three 14 year olds and expensive paint - bad combo. Well, we learned something there!

But after a stern talking-to, they bucked down and did a great job of the finish coats, and we now have a stylish two-tone space.

p.s. I realized after a re-read that I did not give these hard-working young people near enough credit. Granted they were a little less than perfect on Day 1, and perhaps a bit more focused on the head-banging rock 'n roll blaring from the boombox than on the precision of their painting, but they did get a full day's work done, and on Day 2 they were fabulous and the end result is quite cool, so we truly are very grateful to them for their dedication and effort. And we had fun too!