Good Idea - There is a Hotel in China Letting Guests Rent Dogs to Stay in Their Rooms With Them
Dexerto – A hotel in central China is going viral for its unusual “pet sleep-accompanying” service, letting guests pay to have a dog stay with them for the night, with compensation on offer if the pup bites.
The Biguiyuan Phoenix Hotel in Wuhan, Hubei province, launched the service in July. Guests can book a pet-themed room for 499 yuan (around $70 USD) and, after signing an agreement, choose from 10 friendly dog breeds including Golden Retrievers, Huskies, and West Highland Terriers.
Some of the dogs are raised by the hotel itself, while others come from professional pet training institutions. All are vaccinated, health-checked, and trained before being “employed” as overnight companions. The hotel even joked that the furry staff members are paid 100 yuan ($14) per day.
So far, over 80 people have tried the service without any complaints. One family from Shandong province said the experience was the highlight of their trip, with their child beaming while walking the dog through the hotel garden.
What a nice wholesome idea, China. I don't even have anything sarcastic or mean to say about your dog rental hotels. I'm not even going to make a joke about how for an extra 100 yuan, you can rent a grill along with it. Or that for another 200 yuan a hibachi chef will come to your room and fling bits of Husky into your mouth from across the balcony. Not only would that joke be racist, it would also be incorrect. Hibachi originated in Japan.
None of those jokes today. This is nothing but positive dog PR for the country of China. And for $70 per night, it's quite affordable. This hotel would have been a dream for me as a kid. It took a long time before we were finally able to convince our parents to get us a dog. They probably could have kept us at bay for another few years if every once in a while they could take us to the dog hotel to spend a weekend with a lovable, well-trained Golden Retriever.
Parents could even use this dog hotel as an opportunity to teach their kids how to be responsible dog owners. Your family could hang out at the hotel for a weekend, or even a whole week for a nice little mini-vacation. Make the dog the child's responsibility. Have them feed the dog, walk it twice a day, etc. For younger kids, they can learn how to properly approach a dog. Don't pull his tail, don't try to ride him, don't feed him chocolate, things of that nature. It would be like dog practice.
Except it sounds like these dogs are exceptionally well-trained, and probably amazing with people. It might be kinda tough when the family adopts a dog who isn't quite as comfortable around children, and the kids wonder why their family dog doesn't love them as much as hotel dog did. Honestly, the more I think about it, this might end up putting parents in an even tougher spot. Spending a weekend with a perfectly behaved dog probably wouldn't have scratched my dog itch as a child. It just would have made me want a dog even harder.
"Seriously mom? This is so easy. Why wouldn't we want one of these?"
But maybe that's the next step for this hotel. They could offer their guests dogs with various levels of training. The nice well-trained dogs are for people who just want to have a nice time and enjoy the company of a pet. But then they can rent viscous nightmare dogs who shit on the floor and eat your shoes to parents who want to scare their kids out of wanting a dog at all.
I'm surprised this isn't already a thing in the United States. I suppose it might be somewhere, but I've never seen one. I know they've opened dog and cat cafes at a few random places in New York.
Dog hotels (who provide the dogs themselves) seem like a logical next step. As long as the hotels aren't leaving the poor dogs in cages for 24 hours a day when they're not being looked after by a family. But we have such a surplus of dogs in America. If a hotel is able to give a dog a better life than it would have in a humane society (which might be a big if, we'd have to really make sure the dogs are being put in shitty situations), then why not? And if the hotel is able to train the dogs while they're at it, then maybe after a few years of working the dogs could go home with a family for good. There's obviously some liability issues with the whole thing, but overall, that seems like a pretty good deal for everybody involved. People and dogs alike.