Living West Michigan
A Bark Above: Let's Go to The Pack Indoor Dog Park!
Clip: Season 1 | 5m 18sVideo has Closed Captions
Check out The Pack, West Michigan’s only indoor dog park and eatery!
What’s better than a room full of adorable dogs and a nice meal? That’s what you’ll find at The Pack, West Michigan’s only indoor dog park and eatery. While all of us here at Living West Michigan are animal lovers, our video production specialist Melina takes it to a whole new level, so we asked her and her pup to take us on a trip. Let’s check out The Pack.
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Living West Michigan is a local public television program presented by WGVU
Living West Michigan
A Bark Above: Let's Go to The Pack Indoor Dog Park!
Clip: Season 1 | 5m 18sVideo has Closed Captions
What’s better than a room full of adorable dogs and a nice meal? That’s what you’ll find at The Pack, West Michigan’s only indoor dog park and eatery. While all of us here at Living West Michigan are animal lovers, our video production specialist Melina takes it to a whole new level, so we asked her and her pup to take us on a trip. Let’s check out The Pack.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- It's not every day that you can bring your dog to work and go to an indoor dog park.
I'm here at The Pack in Comstock Park with my little Benito, but you can call 'em Bean.
(upbeat music) And we're here to explore what dogs and owners, like us, can do.
(upbeat music) - We've been in business just over three years.
We are an indoor dog park, so people can come play with their dogs.
Similar to an outdoor public dog park, except we put some safety measures in place.
So all dogs need to be vaccinated.
We have staff always monitoring play.
We have dog daycare that we offer, so people can drop off their dog.
We have two trainers on staff, and so we deal with a variety of things, but mostly people that are looking for basic obedience.
We don't necessarily deal with high-aggression reactivity cases, because all the training happens here in our space where a lot of dogs are present.
We also have a full restaurant and full bar.
- [Melina] I heard your french fries are pretty popular.
- Yes.
- Do you have a favorite menu item?
- Our Philly egg rolls are my favorite item.
- Okay, that sounds good.
- We make them ourselves.
And we have a wonderful kitchen manager, and she puts together a really nice menu for us.
So we have hand-tossed pizzas, flatbreads, wings, all kinds of good stuff.
- So it's mine and Bean's first time here today.
What would you tell somebody that's coming here for the first time?
- So we have everyone register before they come, so we ask a series of questions about you, and then a lot of questions about your dog so that we can kind of get to know them before they're coming in our space.
So things like their play history, any medical things we need to be aware of, so we can kind of make sure that this is gonna be a good place for them to play.
- I saw you did recently a winter pet fair benefiting a Humane Society.
Why are events like that so important?
And what other events might you have coming up in the future or have done in the past?
- We like to do events sporadically throughout the year.
Our most popular is Pictures With Santa.
So we partner up with various pet organizations and have Santa come and do photos.
That's a big hit.
And then, our Halloween costume contest is also really popular.
I think we had over 50 dogs dressed up last year, and people get really creative.
It's a lot of fun.
And then, in the summertime we do a lot of breed meetups.
So Golden Retriever Night, Corgi Night, Doodle Night.
It's always fun for, even sometimes people without dogs come if they're just a Corgi lover and they wanna see all the little butts running around.
- For sure, I would be here.
- And then, year round, every Thursday we have trivia night.
Just a lot of fun things, because it's a fun place.
It's easy to come up with events that are just gonna bring people a little joy.
- Yeah, I mean, who's not gonna come to an event with a dog, right?
- Right, right.
So if you're coming without a dog, it's free.
And we have people sometimes that maybe it's not a right time for them to get a dog, or whatever the case, and so they just come in to get their fix, have a drink or some food, and hang out.
- [Melina] What do you kind of hope that The Pack really brings to, you know, the dogs and the people of West Michigan?
- One of the main things, when we first opened, was to create a space that was maybe an alternate to some of the other play spaces that was safer, and so we've achieved that.
And I think one thing I didn't expect was the community building that would happen here, but it has been tenfold what we imagined the community that people would create, because people are coming usually around the same time, same day, and so they see familiar faces.
Even somebody who might be a little reserved, unsure about meeting new people, so easy to do when you have a dog.
- Yeah, no kidding.
- It has kind of like that buffer to meet somebody new.
- I'm Jamie Flynn, and this is my dog, Clara.
We've been coming here for about three years.
I like to come here, because I can let her run and chase the ball, have fun, and not get messy or freezing.
She loves to chase the ball.
She's obsessed with the balls, aren't you?
Can you go find your ball?
- This is Malibu, and this is Caramel.
We come here almost every day.
They love it here.
They can run and play, and we have a lot of fun.
We've met a lot of nice people and nice dogs, of course.
- We've had some really cool friendships form between staff and customers, and between customers themselves, so that's been a really cool thing that we didn't anticipate the way it has.
(upbeat music) - I would say we became part of The Pack today.
But we're gonna keep the fun going over here, or maybe go home and take a little nap.
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Celebrating vibrant people, captivating places, and remarkable things, this is "Living West Michigan."
(upbeat music)
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Living West Michigan is a local public television program presented by WGVU