Talk to the Tail, a dog daycare facility in Niverville, is about to expand to a second location. The 5,000-square-foot building at 455 Wittick Street, in the Niverville Industrial Park, has been custom-designed to give dogs the safest and most comfortable space possible.
Another advantage is that, unlike the original Main Street location, it’s not located on a major thoroughfare.
At the time the business opened in 2020, owner Sara Matwychuk explains, the Main Street building was the only suitable place in town. She admits that being in the centre of town came with its share of problems.
“We loved being on Main Street for people to get to know us, but now we’re known and don’t need exposure anymore, right?” Matwychuk says. “We’ll tuck ourselves away now and annoy the foxes and the rabbits, not the town. No more annoying our neighbours who have been so gracious and patient with us. I am so appreciative of them. I just want to hug them and say, ‘Thank you!’”
The services offered at the new space will include everything offered at their old location, plus some new additions.
The primary service is dog daycare. Owners can book their pups to spend the day with other canine pals under the watchful eye of Talk to the Tail staff members.
“If we’re finding that [the dogs] have extra energy or need extra things, we will give them the enrichment program, which is where they get interactive activities every day,” Matwychuk says. “This is one of the ways that we build such strong bonds with our dogs.”
The enrichment program has become so popular that it will be the daycare’s only option starting in September.
The second prong of Matwychuk’s business is overnight boarding. She has been offering cage-free boarding at her Niverville location, a service which will continue in her new facility.
Cage-free boarding means that the dogs have a home away from home. The dog can spend the evening and night with a staff member, generally Matwychuk herself, in a room with couches and a bed and a television so it feels more like their home base.
Talk to the Tail’s new location will also offer private boarding scenarios for dogs that need a little more alone time. Matwychuk stresses that these private boarding areas aren’t small cement rooms like in more traditional daycares.
“These are not kennels, they’re not cages,” she says. “They are custom-built suites where we have heating lamps and mood lighting and a separate room for them to stay. We will be visiting [the dogs]. And by visiting, I mean playing, cuddling, looking after them, going outside with them, whatever they want.”
The creation of these boarding suites has been a family affair. Matwychuk’s fiancé, Tim Kindzierski, is building the beds for the suites. Her mother is sewing the bedding.
The boarding suites at Talk to the Tail are built to minimize noise, but if a guest dog needs even more privacy there is an option to place a top over the suite.
The new facility will have seven regular-sized boarding suites and three extra-large suites which are well-suited for multi-dog families or extra-large dogs.
A third prong of the business is grooming. The business has been offering some grooming services in the past, but they will now offer a wider range of options. Matwychuk explains that the grooming services will begin in June, since their current groomer is studying abroad.
“Our groomer is getting one of the most official certifications in the world in China right now. She is continuing her education for the next two months and will be back full-time in June.”
In June, Talk to the Tail will offer walk-in grooming services, appointment-based grooming, and an option to have your pup groomed while at daycare or overnight boarding.
The final part of Matwychuk’s business plan is dog training, which is her true passion.
“It’s more like an education program than a training program,” she says. “I just want to share all of my knowledge… I educate based on what our client needs to manage their dog, what they’re comfortable doing, what they’re willing to do, and the scope of what their dog is able to do.”
Building the Business
Matwychuk’s journey into the dog business began about seven years ago when she fostered a dog named Duke, who she refers to a purebred mutt.
“Duke was the most calm, amazing little foster dog I could ever imagine. He was just perfect. I adopted him. And the day that I adopted him, paid the fees, and signed the papers, he peed on my couch and started barking at dogs on leash. So he was saving all of his bad behaviour for when he was sure he was mine.”
Matwychuk wanted to get inside Duke’s brain and figure out why he was behaving this way. She began to find it hard to concentrate on her job because she couldn’t stop thinking about Duke and how to help make his life happier and easier.
She was living in Regina at the time but decided the best thing for her was to go home to Manitoba. Once in Winnipeg, she met Kindzierski, who lived in Niverville with his dog Dante.
Even as Matwychuk continued her career in real estate, she continued to focus on dogs. She started taking dog grooming classes and studied everything dog-related she could get her hands on.
Soon after settling in Niverville, the pieces fell into place for her to consider a new opportunity. All she needed was a property to launch her dog daycare.
Niverville’s town hall had recently moved, leaving their old building vacant. Matwychuk loved the space but determined that it wasn’t financially viable based on the amount of renovation needed.
But as time went on, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Even as she found solutions to one problem, finally arranging to rent the building from someone who agreed to undertake the renos, others surfaced. For one thing, COVID reared its ugly head. Matwychuk had gone too far down the road to opening her business to turn back, so she opened the doors and waited to see how things would play out.
Immediately she was inundated with support from Niverville. She quickly had to hire a full-time employee to manage the demand.
Dog Training
Sometimes, Matwychuk explains, doing what’s best for each dog means needing to have difficult conversations with an owner.
“It sounds unfortunate. However, it’s quite great that, for the industry, we have a high turnover rate. It means that we don’t allow dogs who don’t thrive in our culture. If they’re not going to be 100 percent happy, we don’t let them continue to come because we want them to be 100 percent happy.”
Matwychuk is always willing to go the extra mile for these pups, though. If a dog isn’t thriving at Talk to the Tail, she will suggest another facility that may be better suited to that particular dog’s needs.
“I’ve taken my dog to several daycares, and I’ve seen him thrive in many different environments, and I’ve seen him fail in different environments. So just because daycare is daycare doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same everywhere you go.”
Talk to the Tail’s claim to fame, according to Matwychuk, is their knowledge of each guest dog. They remember each dog’s name and know exactly what makes each dog tick.
“We know dog personalities,” she says. “We know what is happy, stressed, sad, scared, and we are not worried to tell owners exactly how their days are. We give report cards with ample photos each day of exactly what they’re doing. Dogs can’t talk, but they can send signals. So what we make sure to do is constant awareness of dog behaviour, constant research, constant education. We are so in tune with anything new that might come up.”
The most recent addition to the dog-training world, she says, is the concept of balanced training. Matwychuk says that there isn’t yet any certification for balanced training, but it’s the method she uses most frequently.
Essentially, balanced training uses aspects of both positive and negative reinforcements to ensure quality outcomes for both the dog and owner.
Matwychuk will train nearly any dog, but she does stay away from aggressive dogs since she needs to guarantee the safety of all the dogs in the Talk to the Tail environment. However, she is more than willing to refer aggressive dogs to a trainer who can help.
Leash reactivity training is Matwychuk’s speciality. She sees so many people struggle to keep their pups happy and under control on leash. She can help.
“Let me show you the way. There is a light at the end of the tunnel!”
