Happy Holidays!

Thank you everyone for your lovely cards! We are open every day, 7 days a week (including holidays). Here are some fun times the dogs have during the holidays.

Rainier, Santa, & the Nutcracker!

 Maggie Rose (Left) & Thorn (Right) getting cozy for the cold nights approaching!

 Pearl enjoying a walk on the boardwalk =)

 Dakota (Right) and Sierra (Left) spending quality time at the park

Louis dreams that he is a motorized Santa

Happy Holidays and stay warm through these cold winter nights!
- Zach

Holiday Customer Appreciation Gift Basket

Thank you Fort Fido customers! In order to show appreciation,  we are having a holiday gift basket raffle valued at $225. The raffle entry days are from December 1st through December 17th. Each day that your dog attends Fort Fido (Daycare or Boarding) you will be gifted with one (1) automatic entry into the raffle. The more days that your dog attends, the more chances that you have of winning the gift basket. We will be drawing the winning entry on Friday December 18th. If you have any questions about the event, please do not hesitate to ask us in-person or leave a comment and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Good luck! =)

- Zach

Finally Back Online!

Here are those belated, yet wonderful, Christmas photos I promised. Thank you for sending them in everybody! Please enjoy!

-Grant
P.S. I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday! Thank you for you support this season.

Cookies & Night Clips

 

Many of us bake Holiday Cookies around this time of year. It can be fun to decorate them with family and friends, eating them is always good too! Unfortunately, many of our favorite Holiday Treats aren't too healthy, or are even quite bad for dogs. So where does this leave Fido, amongst the cookie-eating festivities of this season? Well, you are just going to have to bake him or her their own batch of Doggy Holiday Treats. Don't worry, I've found you plenty of first rate recipes you can try at home lol!

Cookies For Canines Of all the links I found, I liked this one the best.

How to make Christmas Cookies for dogs Not bad, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

Best Dog Treat Recipes Neat site, worth a visit!

Well, if you get that "wild hair", let me know how they turned out. Heck, I might even try one, a few of those recipes sounded more than good enough for me to eat haha.


Here are two fun clips from The Fort last night. They are mainly of Kelsey's Dobie pup, Finley, and Toby having a blast during the wee-hours. You may also spot Lillie, Maggie, Sheldon and others. So fa, Overnight Boarding here has been working out well. Outstanding really! It's sometimes wild to think that we are open 24/7 365, yet our crew here is handling business quite well. Besides, we are finding out there is quite a need for this... We are here for you and your pets to meet that need.

Cheers,

-Grant

Xmas Pic Time & News!

We are getting really excited for one of our favorite times of the year... When the Fort Fido Dog Christmas Photos start pouring in! It's really fun to see what you guys come up with and it is much appreciated. We love seeing our canine pals in their Holiday Best. So please, if you get some time, send us in ( grant@fortfido.com ) a Holiday Themed photo of your pet. I look forward to posting them all up on the blog every year. Please note, if you aren't tech-savvy, or are low on time, just bring your pet in dressed up and we'll snap a quick photo in the lobby. Or, bring in a photo, and we can scan it right quick and hand it right back.

Here's a Holiday teaser pic of "Santa Happy". My, doesn't he look festive? He'd fit right in at the North Pole... He might blend-in too good without that hat LOL!

Found in the news recently:

Dogs can drive cars too!

Utah boy with Autism has service dog by his side.

Pocket dogs making Old English Sheepdogs rare.

Beer brewer expands to dog biscuits.

Dog alerts owner to neighbor's fire.

Loyal dog stays by missing child's side until found!

Take care,

-Grant

Missed Santa Pic and News

Hi y'all,

My apologies to Mr. Luther & Miss Payton. I somehow didn't scan there Christmas card until it was too late, doh! Either way, have a gander at it now, better late than never. These two cuties are always photo ready...

(Priceless! Payton always looks like that but I have never seen Luther with that petrified looking, don't-mess-with-me gaze hahaha!)

Some news links for ya:
Amazing dog can save lives by dialing 9-1-1

Neighbor revives dog hurt in fire

Tintin: A beginner's guide to the European Classic

New Year delivers helpful companion for Texas boy

Texas rancher trains dogs to tend to cattle


I hope your New Year's holiday went well. I cranked up the pipes at Midnight, always a pleasure to be able to do that lol. ;)

Have a nice week, welcome 2012!

-Grant

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Today I just wanted to say, we are very lucky here at Fort Fido. We have outstanding customers, wonderful dogs, a nice facility, a tremendous, well-seasoned staff, fun training classes, a food we can sleep at night selling and a great reputation! Wow, there is a lot of "horn to toot" hahaha, the list goes on and on...

As I reflect on 2011, I realize that it was a pivotal year for The Fort. It was our fifth year in business (some folk say you've "made it" when you hit that number) which was hallmarked by winning Best Doggy Daycare in the South Puget Sound by South Sound Magazine. Time has gone by so fast. It feels like only yesterday Dad (David) was saying, "Man your Battle Stations!", in all seriousness, while anticipating an eight dog day. Hahaha! My how we have grown, learned and improved over these last five. We shall continue to do so! I can't say what the future will bring. However, I can promise that Fort Fido will continue to provide a superior Dog Daycare service to all in the coming years.

As always, we here in "dog land" lol thank you all for your business and support, past years, this year and years to come! We (our whole staff included) take pride in what we do and hope that it shows through in our efforts.

With that said, have a safe and happy New Year's Celebration. Best wishes to you and yours for 2012. The wife and I will probably be checking out First Night. There was good fireworks one year down by Ruston Way, might do that too. The Fort is open tomorrow with it's regular Saturday hours (9am - 6pm). It's a perfect day to get some energy out of your pups before the festivities begin. Drop on in!

Cheers!

-Grant
P.S. We have received a couple of grand new reviews on Yelp and Google. You can check them out here and here. Feel free to help us bring in the New Year by letting the world know how awesome Fort Fido is! ;)

My wife has been using Yelp quite a bit, she enjoys reviewing restaurants and other businesses with it on her iPhone. Believe it or not, I can hardly work one of those darn things. Gary programs apps for them! Maybe we need to get some type of Fort Fido App going someday, not sure how many use them? A reminder/alarm to pick up your pet? Schedule and pay over the phone? Hmmm...

Also, if you have worked with everyone's favorite Dog Trainer, Garrett Stevens, please leave him a supportive review as well. Garrett has launched his new website recently. His business is continuing to thrive and he is gaining much popularity in the South Sound. Way to go Garrett!

Kumpi Day

In 1997 Evy Serpa lost her dog Kumpi to cancer when he was only five. This dog expert of over thirty years contracted with a premier nutritionist to create a product line. She was surprised at how far beyond the current concept of premium one could go.


Hey everyone! I hope you all had a nice Holiday, we sure did. Got to checkout Warhorse. It was a pretty good film, although there weren't any dogs in it lol.

Kumpi arrived today so we've been a bit busy. We apologize for any inconveniences due to it's late arrival. We've been out of the twenty pound bags for a couple of weeks now. Luckily that is over and we are all stocked-up now. Thank you for your patience.

Here are a few neat bits from the web I've spotted today.

Ask Dog Lady

Lost Blind Dog Returned Home

Dog Saves Family From House Fire

Dog Wearing Pants Does Something Amazing (Video)

Dogs May Tell Much About A Man

I'll leave you with a fun clip of Tikvah and Miss Phoebe doing what they do best in the Medium Roll.



Take it easy,

-Grant

Christmas is almost here!

(A Santa Buddy Part 2 variation lol, click to enlarge, what a looker!)

Well, it looks like Christmas is finally upon us. On behalf of the whole Fort Fido crew, Merry Christmas and or Happy Holidays to you all!

We thank you all very much for your business, support and positive vibes. We'd also like to thank you for the gifts and goodies you have gorged us with this season hahaha! Thank you! We no doubt have the very best customers and canine companions here at The Fort.

Enjoy your family, friends, furry friends and feasts. Have a grand old time, be well, cheers!

-Grant, David, Nancy, Hope, Gary, Matt, Kelsey, Jacob & Devin

Some more of our lovely greeting cards

Take a look, click on each picture to enlarge. Louis's card was another one of my favorites, how creative haha! He always has quite a look on his old Bulldog mug.

Here's Gemma in the spirit

Our bud Rainier with Santa and The Family

Miss Gingersnap wishing us a Merry Christmas

Briggs, Carona and their owner Gary looking dapper.

Louie, patiently waiting for the Jolly Dude...

We received several marvelous cards this year and we thank you all very much!

I only scanned the cards that had our Fido dogs on them to show my Blog fans. Don't feel left out... We've put every card received up in the lobby for all to see.

:)

Have a great day!

-Grant

Santa Claus is coming to town...

Rather, "Santa Butters", is coming to town hahaha! You may recognize Buddy, he is one of Fort Fido's poster boys. He is a very handsome American Eskimo that has been coming to The Fort for years. You just can't beat his striking look! It's been awesome to use pictures of Buddy for marketing, specifically our Website/Blog Logo. He is one photogenic little canine. Twas hilarious this morning when Butters came in as Kris Kringle, we had to get a pic of it.


Long time Fort attendee, Black Pearl, brought us in some excellent Christmas Cookies. Thank you! Ironically enough, Hope, with Dave's glasses as a prop, looked very similar to the "Cool Santa" depicted on the sugary dough haha! Nancy had to score a photo of that one.




I'll leave you with four clips of The Rolls. Two from the Medium, one from the Big and one long one from the Little Roll.









Cheers,

-Grant
P.S. Just a side note, other dogs in our Website/Blog Logo include (From left to Right) Faramir, Mr. Bingley, Lola and Ruger. All but Mr. Bingley still attend and have been doing so since 2006. Thanks dogs for looking so good! ;)
P.P.S. Here is Buddy from 2009 in another costume lol!

Sweet St. Nick Flower Dog

(Click Photos To Enlarge)

Buddy's ma, Bonnie, sent us an amazing flower arrangement from Buds & Blooms. It is multiple flowers shaped into a very artistic "Santa Dog". Thank you very much Bonnie, this pup brightened our day and has gotten many a compliment! Cortez couldn't help himself, he just had to pose with the new Santy.



This morning I found two good links from MSN.

The first link is actually from the Today Show. It is the Top 11 Animal Stories from 2011 and there are some tremendous ones. Although not all the stories are canine related, several of them are. ;)

Now, I have seen this next link before and it cracked me up, some folks think it's creepy, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle lol. Checkout the book, Yoga Dogs. I was reminded about this book while glancing at MSN's Humorous Holiday Gifts.



Have a great weekend!

-Grant
P.S. Christmas is right around the corner... If you need to get some "Holiday Things" done without Fido's help, feel free to drop him or her into The Fort. Please note, we are NOT closing or changing our hours of operation in the month of December this year.