We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Diana Gray a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Diana, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Pawsense Enrichment Center focuses on the behaviour of each individual dog and ensures that they are receiving the appropriate amount of stimulation or enrichment. We aren’t a daycare free-for-all and each day all of our clients receive bits of training, whether they are in our training program or not.

The idea behind Pawsense is for dogs to feel like they are in as warm and loving of an environment, such as their own home, but only filled with lots of playmates.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Back when I was a child, I always loved the idea of working with animals and studying their behaviour, and growing up with dogs was a great chance to hone my skill. I began with training my dogs and chinchilla at home with simple commands. I also began studying behaviour to understand why animals acted differently in various situations. Over the years, I grew these skills with classes and coursework to truly dive into the psychology of animals.

I initially began working as a private dog trainer but knew I wanted more for myself and the dogs I interacted with. Many clients always stated that it was difficult for them to find boarding for their dogs in a comfortable environment where they weren’t crated and regularly received human or dog interactions. After going through this same issue and trying to find a boarder for my anxious dog, I came up with the idea of Pawsense.

At Pawsense, our lives are dogs. We play, train, talk about, talk to, cuddle, read to, sing to, and watch movies with dogs. We plan trips around our dogs, spend holidays with them, make and buy our dogs birthday gifts and even built a homemade agility course in our backyard. No furniture is off-limits for our dogs. Since most of us don’t have human children, our lives revolve around enriching the lives of the Pawsense dogs.

We work with them on manners, tricks, agility, and behaviour modification. We know firsthand that dogs are a big part of many people’s lives and they don’t want to leave them just anywhere with just anyone. So we created Paul sense: a dog loving team bringing owners a positive reinforcement-based dog-centred facility. Owners can have a piece of mind knowing will treat the dog the same way we treat our own dogs, with patients, love, and kindness – and we always have a lot of fun.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

During COVID, there were times when we had to reduce our hours of operation or reduce intake due to limited staffing, but we always made sure to communicate with our clients the changes ahead of time these changes. Our clients have always been extremely understanding and we are very grateful for their understanding and staying with us.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We have been able to build our brand by ensuring we have a 1 on 1 relationship with our clients. We take the time with each client to explain our daily schedules and the activities that their dog participated in throughout the day. If we have any recommendations regarding nutrition, socialization, or training, we will always provide our clients with the best information possible to ensure their dog is successful in life. The most important thing at the end of the day is a happy, healthy dog.

Contact Info:

• Website: pawsense.org
• Instagram: instagram.com/pawsensedaycare
• Facebook: facebook.com/pawsensedaycareboarding
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pawsense-daycare-boarding

Image Credits
All images belong to Pawsense Daycare & Boarding Enrichment Center