New business offers upscale alternative to traditional kennel

October 29, 2006

By Michael Rovito/Frontiersman WASILLA - Set back off Schrock Road a few miles from downtown Wasilla, in an unassuming building in the woods, the Ritz Carlton of pet hotels is open for business.

It's just a fact that sometimes Fido can't go on vacation with the family. Maybe the destination is halfway around the world, or maybe having a dog along just wouldn't work. Either way, Angela Rinkevage, a born and raised Alaskan, wants those dogs to have a vacation of their own instead of being put in canine purgatory while their owners are gone.

The story goes back four years, when Rinkevage took her own dogs to a kennel before heading out of town. Sitting behind a chain-link fence cage, the dogs waited, with little to no exercise, for Rinkevage to return. When she finally returned to get them, she could tell something was wrong. Their mannerisms had changed, and it took nearly a week for them to start acting like they had before spending time in “doggy prison,” as Rinkevage referred to it.

That was motivation enough, and after years of planning and building, Dogtopia Suites became a reality.

“This is my dream,” Rinkevage said on a snowy afternoon recently as she continued to put the finishing touches on Dogtopia.

Dog owners should throw out everything they know about the typical dog kennel. In fact, don't call Dogtopia a kennel at all. It truly is a dog hotel.

With 14 individual rooms - complete with beds, couches, tables, chairs and even cable TV and DVD - the aim of Dogtopia is to make its guests feel at home. Floors are heated, including the outside “porch” of each room, and doggie friendly movies like “Homeward Bound” or “Eight Below” offer more options for entertainment.

“It's like they're going on vacation, too,” Rinkevage said.

As the Valley's first real snowfall quietly blanketed Rinkevage's 10 acres in white Thursday, she and the hotel's manager, Sharon Sweeney, a 26-year veteran of the Wasilla Veterinary Clinic and a licensed vet technician, were busy hanging pictures and furthering construction on their dog hotel. Sweeney's dog, Fire, a Doberman pinscher, made sure to interrupt a few times for a game of fetch.

Since dogs thrive on activity and attention, Dogtopia is designed to provide all of that to ease the stress of being left behind without familiar faces around.

Rinkevage and Sweeney will play with the dogs in a large hallway designed just for that purpose - playing. There is an outside area on the 10-acre property complete with a trail leading down to a tributary of the Little Susitna River. Dogs will always be on a leash when outside the enclosures, and Rinkevage plans on expanding the fencing to the edge of a bluff over the tributary.

Inside, rooms are themed - such as an Alaska room, an Oriental room and a hunting room - and an elevated bathtub stands at the ready in case owners would like their pooch to get a bath before heading home.

Success stories since Dogtopia opened are many, including the hotel's first

customer, a 10-year-old Doberman.

Rinkevage said the Doberman's owners were shocked when they picked their dog up and she didn't seem to want to go home. Many dogs can typically be seen jumping for joy when their family comes to get them after spending time in a traditional kennel. Before leaving, Rinkevage said, the Doberman ran back to her and gave a final kiss good-bye.

Rinkevage's life has been full of animals, and not just dogs. Her family was such animal lovers that a goose attacked by dogs and left for dead was taken to the vet and nursed back to health by her family.

There are rules at Dogtopia, such as owners being required to bring their own dog food. This takes the guess work out of feeding time, keeping animals with food allergies and other special considerations safe. Owners can request their dog be socialized with others, which Rinkevage and Sweeney will do, leaving the dogs on their leashes and making professional judgments as to which dogs should and should not have contact.

But one thing both women stress is dogs that come to the hotel must be house dogs, meaning no canines who spend all their days tied up in the back yard.

“They're not used to it,” Sweeney said. “They will destroy everything.”

As construction dust continued to settle Thursday, Rinkevage said she's looking toward the future and hoping to have a constant turnover of customers. Without even advertising so far, she said, word-of-mouth business has kept Dogtopia a busy place.

With the sun rapidly disappearing behind the horizon, Fire, the Doberman, took a place on the bed in one of the rooms where Rinkevage and Sweeney were sitting. The relaxed, comfortable look on his face was reminiscent of something hotels for humans try to achieve all the time. But this time, Dogtopia, a hotel for dogs, was making a canine smile.

Contact Michael Rovito at 352-2252 or michael.rovito@ frontiersman.com.