Introducing Chris Sugarbaker and his grooming services

Chris Sugarbaker of Cut-N-Run is now offering grooming services to Scampers customers. He brings his mobile grooming van once a week, and is available for anything from a pooch pedicure to a full wash-cut-style.

Chris has some twenty years experience as an animal groomer, and has an amazing rapport with animals. We love when Chris comes to Scampers, but the dogs love it even more! He has a way of charming them first with a kind of dog-music that he makes with his mouth, and then with the wonderful massage and fur fluffing to help the dogs shed their excesses.

To arrange Chris' grooming services for your pooch, call us anytime or ask us the next time you visit and we'll reserve some time in Chris' schedule.

In for a Penny - Could she be a Half-Pound?

We welcomed Penny to our pup population on Tuesday, when she came for a half-day visit to see if she liked our offering, and we were delighted to see her return for more yesterday. She's a little one-year-old Shih Tzu with the softest coat and the longest plume of a tail, and apparently no recognition of her limitations - she's trying to pick this thing up and take it to another corner.

The Dance as it should be performed

With Sasha and Mojo, we have a perfect illustration of the way dogs play.

It starts with a polite bow, to indicate this is meant to be play.

The Dance is only for two like-minded, consenting pooches, and be a blur of constant flowing motion and very even give and take from both parties.

Here, Mojo and Sasha are chasing a "satellite" - a great toy for all sizes of dog.

Sasha and Mojo met just today, but they're destined to be great friends.

Jax Just Joined us Today!

Such a funny little pooch - a total love bug with the biggest little feet. And unruly ears - sometimes they flop all the way back!

Watch out, though - when picked up, he tends to lick about the head and neck.

Stina's getting her face Jax-scrubbed. Apparently she enjoys it! 

Eric didn't mind so much either - he's still friends despite the through ear-washing and chewing he got a few minutes earlier. (See how clean they are!)

Now Jax is having some finger gnawing time with Eric.

Meet Sasha, Northern Beauty

Sasha Tornberg joined us as Dog 1. She's definitely an outdoorsy dog!

Gloria and Schuster fit right in with the Scampers pack

Gloria and Schuster are an active pair!

We were pleased to welcome Schuster and Gloria to Scampers this morning. They are fun pups with plenty of energy and plenty of moxie too.

Nose to Nose to Nose - Gloria, Rosie and Schuster introduce themselves

It was fun to see that these former neighbors of Sasha’s were delighted to meet up with their old friend, and they all spent lots of time in good healthy play, punctuated by the occasional nap.

Meet Sasha, Northern Beauty

Sasha Tornberg joined us on Day 1.

She's an outdoorsy dog!

Scampers Opens Monday, October 25th

Great news!  Scampers Daycamp for Dogs is now fully operational with official approvals from both the King County Board of Health and the City of Kirkland!  We’re opening for business on Monday, October 25^th, and we’re already taking bookings for temperament screenings.

For more information, or to arrange your screening appointment for your dog(s), call 425-821-9100 or visit our brand new site:  www.scampersdogs.com

We look forward to meeting all of your best friends and being able to give them all the tummy rubs they can handle!

Why Choose Doggy Daycare?

Our canine companions offer us unconditional love in our busy lives, yet we are challenged to find time to exercise them and give them a full, active and interactive experience. Instead, we go off to work leaving them at home alone, and then we feel guilty.

To compound the guilt, we learn quickly that bored or lonely dogs suffer separation anxiety and develop undesirable behaviors like incessant barking and destructive chewing. (Whoops! Don’t forget to put away your Jimmy Choos!) We've all seen that  dogs who are left too long cannot “contain themselves”, so we come home to wet spots on the floor.

We love our dogs, so we do our best. We get home after a long day, and if we’re able to summon up some reserved energy, and if it’s not too wet outside, we drag ourselves off the sofa to harness up our pooches and take them outside for a run, maybe to the local off-leash park.

Dogs are pack animals. They thrive when given a chance to interact within a pack, so when they reach the off-leash park, they practically explode with enthusiasm. Yay! Time to play!

But who are those other dogs romping freely around the park? How can you be sure they are fully immunized, flea-free and friendly?  

Contrary to popular belief, a pooch who’s wagging his tail at you isn’t saying, “I’m friendly; come play with me.” He’s saying, “Sure, I’ll engage.” “Engage in what?” is an important question. If he’s stiff and staring directly at your dog, you should know it’s probably not his intention to play nice. And what happens when a dog becomes so aroused he slips into his limbic brain where he is so consumed by his instincts he is incapable of hearing his owner call him? Even the gentlest of dogs can suddenly launch into a deadly dogfight with very little warning.

Doggy Daycare offers dogs a fun environment where supervised safe socialization and exercise fill their days, and free play and free napping - alongside dogs who have been screened for both personality and health - provide a realistic pack experience while taking the guilt, chewed Jimmy Choos, and wet spots on the carpet out of their owners’ lives.

(Useful tidbits: In the dog world, it’s rude to look directly into a dog’s eyes before you’ve gotten to know him; it’s disrespectful to pat him on the head, and bending over him to do so is considered aggressive.)

Introducing Whiskey, the perfect Houseguest

Whiskey: Perpetual Poetry in Motion

Whiskey joined the Hughes household this week while her people are in Hawaii. Whiskey is a Beagle x King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, and she's soft and cuddly and constantly wiggling. She and Rosie are a great pair, often found cuddled together. Spats and Trixie still aren't sure, though.

Whiskey's a great fan of food - she'd accept any food, anytime, from anybody, for any reason. But she's sticking to a strict diet according to her people's rules, even though she's probably wiggly enough that she'd maintain her puppy-ish figure anyway.

She's super talented too. Her people have taught her a bunch of fun tricks like "High Five", "Back Up", "Stick Em Up / Bang" - she falls over and plays dead!

While she's staying with the Hughes family, she comes in with Stina to Scampers each day to hang out with Rosie and Biscuit while we prepare for our opening day (which, by the way, is COMING SOON!)

Butt Naked Biscuit Sits Again and Again and Again!

Poor Biscuit got her tail end shaved a bit more than her modesty can accommodate! She'll walk a few steps with her tail curled all the way to one side, and then she curls her tail all the way to the other side, and then she sits! And sits. And sits again!

Rosie's Photo Shoot Results - What a Photogenic Pooch!

Rosie's just Lookin' to be Loved

Rosie The Explorer?

Scampers Breaks Ground with Ground Breaking Technology

After months of preparation and discussion and design and design revision not to mention application and approval, today we broke ground on our exterior work, with installation of our rain garden.

InHarmony's Bryan LaComa looks on as the digging begins.

No, this is not where the dogs will be playing. This is where the water that runs off their play places will be filtered into the ground after being scientifically but naturally processed through the correct strata of the correct soils and sands and indigenous plants' roots, which renders this run-off clean.

Our rain garden designer and contractor is InHarmony sustainable gardens. Visit their website for more information on this wonderful technology, so perfect for the Pacific Northwest.

Their work will finish in about a week, and then our fencing will be installed, and once that's been completed and all our work has been inspected and approved, we'll be .... TA DAHHHH welcoming our first customers. We'll keep you posted.

Scampers Numbers Expanded by One - Introducing "The Dude"

We are so happy to announce that Eric Olsgaard has joined the Scampers team as of October 1st.

Stina has known Eric for some years, and Linda has gotten to know him since moving to Redmond in July. Eric's an enormous help with an enormous heart and and an enormous work ethic that the Scampers co-founders promise will never go unappreciated or unrecognized.

Eric comes to Scampers with a ton of experience in everything from logistics to construction to interior decor - and, no, he was not the decorator! He's the dude who installed, with Gregg's help, all that rolled rubber flooring. He's the dude who is this very moment installing the shelf that our music box (boom box!) will sit on - see his pic below. (BTW: Moments later he fixed the latch on our entry gate!) He's the dude who will touch up the "holidays" in our epoxy paint job, and the dude who will coordinate the various contractors who are about to descend on Scampers to finish the job. He's The Dude, a perfect complement to the team of The Redhead and The Brunette.

Here's The Dude, Eric

Eric is a super dog-friendly guy, and all the dogs know it. Maybe they can somehow tell that he sports a tat of "Big Dog". Maybe they've noticed he is almost always wearing dog motif-ed shirts. Or maybe he's sporting some special scent - courtesy of Mojo and Buddy. Mojo and Buddy are Eric's pooches, a couple of little white moppish things that clearly have a solid hold on his heart... well, except for the great big part of his heart that is devoted to his wife, Lisa, the goddess of haircutting and color. We're so grateful to Lisa that she's willing to share him with us.

Building Permit Application APPROVED ... (but)

HOORAY HOORAY AND HOORAY AGAIN! We received word from our Hero, Duncan, that our Building Permit was approved. We were in the car on the way to Home Depot to buy more hardware when Stina's cell phone rang. (It must have looked strange to anyone looking on to see two women teary and giddy as they pawed through the bins looking for lipstick red caribiner rings.)

We were almost a week late, but at least the permit had been approved as designed (Yes, the number of parking spaces was fine!) and we would finally be able to get crews going on the buildout of the rain garden and exterior fencing, and on the laundry room.

It wasn't until later that we realized we hadn't actually been given the news by a City employee. That call would come much later in the day.

When it did finally come, we jumped into my car to dash up to City Hall and pick up our building permit. That's when we got the bad news.

Yes, we could pick up our Building Permit, if we paid for the various fees attached to it. We were ready for that. We knew there would be fees. We were expecting a bill of about $1,000. We were not expecting a bill for over $7,500. That includes a Traffic Impact Assessment of over $6,500.

There it is. The next hoop for us to jump through. Only this one's in flames!

Apparently the City of Kirkland thinks we are going to attract so much new traffic to the Totem Lake neighborhood that it will cost $6,500 in new pavement, stripe painting, bulbs for stop lights ... Apparently this is the way the City pays for public works.

The figure is based on an intricate system of base fees and multipliers. The Traffic Engineer was so proud to advise that $6,500 was in fact very low. His original figure was about $60,000, but he was able to bring it down to $30,000 and then again to $6,500.

What we perceived was a series of arbitrary decisions. If the figure could be brought from $60,000 to $6,500, why not to $1,000? Why not zero, for that matter? Well, we do not expect to reach zero. We do understand the concept of traffic impacts and the associated costs, and recognize we should bear our fair share. Stina was given a cursory tour of the math, and was able to identify one particular area where the Traffic Engineer had gone wrong. He estimated that only 25% our customer base would be derived from passers-by, and that the remaining 75% would be making a special trip to come to our shop. But despite civil debate, the Traffic Engineer would stand firm. And we were not convinced of any fairness.

We know that 25% is an incorrect factor. We are on the feeder route between I-405 and the Microsoft campus and all the tech companies on Willows, and that those who commute to those jobs from Bothell, Kenmore, Mill Creek, Lynnwood and Everett drive past our front door. We also recognized that the residents to the south and east of our location use this road to travel to their jobs at Evergreen Hospital, and in Bothell, Kenmore, Mill Creek, Lynnwood and Everett.

We've already had several visitors because we erected our sign.



We chose this location for the passby traffic. 42,000 cars pass by our storefront every day.



We know that at least 40% of our market will come to us because they see us on their way to work in the mornings, now especially, since we've installed our new monument sign at the streetside.

We called on our Hero, again.

The next morning, Duncan was able to meet with the Traffic Engineer and learned the formula for the calculations. Once we had that detail, we were able to understand just how large a magnitude the tweaking of that passby factor could have on the bottom line.


Armed with our information, we suggested to the Traffic Engineer that this factor of 25% should be changed to about 40%, which reduced the assessment to less than $1,000, but he would not accept our word. He said, "Bring me data."

So off we went in search of data. We contacted the owners of 4 doggy day cares located on major roads in Seattle and asked them what their numbers were. In all cases, their estimates were over 50%, and described as "conservative estimates".  



Dana M., the owner of Fuzzy Buddy's on Aurora had tracked her sources using Quick Books and was able to run a report for us, very generously interceding on our behalf with an extremely well crafted communique to our friend, the Traffic Engineer. He's not sure when he will have time to study her data. He was not willing to accept the anecdotal data from the other owners, despite the fact that one of those was Rick Beaubelle, the owner of Seattle Canine Club and president of the Seattle Dog Daycare Association.



As incensed as we were to have to leave City Hall without our permit, yet again, we started making calls. First was to our Hero. Then, at his recommendation, we began extending our appeal to senior individuals in the Public Works department, and we hope they will soon arrive at a correct and fair assessment, which we will be willing to pay.

For any new business just preparing to open its doors, an extra expenditure - whether $1,500 or $6,500 - is an awful shock. Had the traffic impact assessment been designed as a fee to be paid at the end of Year 1, or in installments, it could have been made manageable, although it would impact the year's profits.  For many new businesses, the amount might as well be $60,000.

The correct time to advise entrepreneurs who plan on entering the Kirkland market that they should be prepared to pay a Traffic Impact Assessment fee of several - to tens of - thousands of dollars is at the beginning of the process, before they commit to their lease, before they make purchases and commitments to suppliers and service providers, and to their clients, before they leave their former jobs, move to a new city (or, as in my case, a new country). The Traffic Engineer was included in our fact finding tour at the beginning of May, and while he advised us there would be a Traffic Impact Assessment fee to be paid, we were under the impression we could expect a fee in the order of a few hundred dollars.

So, we continue our battle. We still do not have our Building Permit. We anticipate calling on our Hero again for one last charge of the doggy brigade. We believe we will be victorious. And maybe, after all of this, the City of Kirkland will reconsider its Traffic Impact Assessment fee structure.