McHenry indoor dog park, day care to resume full operations with additional staff

Last year, Maria Guzman of McHenry found the perfect place for her two 1-year-old dogs to be cared for while she ran errands and where they could let off some puppy energy.

However, due to a lack of employees at Woof & Run indoor dog park and day care in McHenry, Guzman and her pups, Nina and Nala, lost that much-needed outlet for a couple of weeks.

The owner, Brian Wilson, said he and his employees were burning out and he shut down April 1 to take time to find and hire the right people.

But trying to find the “right people” for the job – working with and caring for the dogs – is not a simple task, he said.

That’s a challenge other McHenry County employers face, said Jim McConoughey, president of the McHenry County Economic Development Corporation.

It’s like when everybody is holding up the ladder and someone walks away everyone works harder to keep that side of the ladder up.

—  Brian Wilson, owner of Woof & Run Indoor Dog Park and Daycare in McHenry

McConoughey said the county’s unemployment rate is at 3.9%, about 5% being ideal.

What this indicates, he said, is that positions are open but not being filled for various reasons, including people leaving the job market for retirement or returning to school to learn new skills.

“There are jobs available, but fewer people to fill those jobs,” McConoughey said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people were afraid to go to work and received benefits from the federal government. This resulted in employers of all types and sizes to not be able to fill positions.

The reasons are different at this time, he said.

At times there is a “mismatch” in the skills for jobs that are open, he said. Some job seekers may be underqualified or overqualified or their skill set just does not match the job.

That was the challenge Wilson was dealing with.

At times he found a good candidate, but then “sometimes the right fit doesn’t have the right schedule. … Staffing remains the biggest obstacle to growth. It’s tough,” he said.

“It isn’t very easy, and this is not just the type of business to just put people in place to cover hours,” said Wilson, 47, of Oakwood Hills. “Like a fireman or a policeman, you can’t just pull someone in and throw them in and say, ‘Just go.’”

Wilson has hired a new manager and one attendant. He used the job posting website Indeed and still is interviewing, looking to hire two more attendants.

Wilson, who opened the business at 1786 N. Richmond Road last March, said shutting down the 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. day care offering for a couple of weeks was a difficult decision, but necessary.

Between the economy, staffing struggles and a canine respiratory illness that swept through the facility last month, requiring staff to scrub down the entire facility, Wilson said he “hit a point.”

“It just kind of got to a point where there were too many things that happened too quick and too close together that forced me to do what is best for us and the customer, which was to stop, regroup, restaff and retrain.” Wilson said. “Start over fresh.”

The employees he had left were just burnt out, and he did not have the appropriate level of staff needed to stay open.

“The business slowed from the spring break cycle, humans going out of town and on vacations,” Wilson said. “Financially, we hit a point where things got too tight, employees quit. We were just trying to maintain. With less staff, we pretty much pushed my [remaining] staff to complete burnout.

“It’s like when everybody is holding up the ladder and someone walks away everyone works harder to keep that side of the ladder up,” he said.

Applying for jobs has changed over the years, McConoughey said, and what once was accomplished through newspaper classified ads and in-person introductions now is done primarily online through social media and websites such as Indeed.

While it is a positive move, McConoughey said, some job seekers may not have an online presence to draw the attention of those hiring. On the other side, small businesses hiring also may not have the online presence needed to attract candidates.

“If you don’t have the technical skills to have a social presence you will be hard to find,” he said.

Julie Westphal, whom Wilson hired as the new manager, is a traveling dog trainer and certified veterinary tech. She met Wilson last year when she brought some of her clients’ dogs to the facility, before moving away for work. She recently saw Wilson’s post on Facebook that he needed help.

Westphal, 39, said she already was moving back to the McHenry area and called him up.

She said she is excited to begin working at the facility.

“I enjoy the concept of the open dog park and play area,” said Westphal, who has helped several shelters facilitate enrichment programs for dogs.

In her work, she uses aromatherapy, nose work, structured play, brain games, nap time and “reading to rover” when the dogs lie down and children read to them.

“My main goal for the last 22 years is to send dogs home better than what they came in,” she said.

Full-day day care and indoor park play operations will resume May 8.

That’s good news for Nina and Nala – who during the break couldn’t sleep, were quite rambunctious in the Guzman household, and ate shoes and pillows, Guzman said.

On a trip there Tuesday, Guzman said her dogs, pit bull mixes, whined and barked with excitement as they approached the facility.

The facility, which continued to open Tuesday nights for indoor park play and training classes, will host its monthly adoption event with K9s4UDog Rescue Inc., from noon to 3 p.m. this Saturday.

Wilson, who has cared for dogs much of his life, said he is happy to be back open for the community.

“Resetting everything with the business and taking the break helped me to refocus my energy back where it matters most and that’s on the dogs and their experience here,” Wilson said. “Sometimes it’s necessary to hit control-alt-delete and move forward again with a better plan.”