Our number one focus is the comfort and safety of all our guests. Although we work closely with our on-call veterinarian and veterinarians in the area to ensure the best possible environment and care possible, we are not a medical boarding facility and would hate for anything to happen on our watch due to old age that we are not equipped to swiftly handle.

For these reasons, we do not accept new pet clients 12 years of age or older who have never visited Royal Treatment for any services.

For our current clients 12 years of age or older, grooming and day boarding services are readily available, but we do require a day boarding visit and a vet approval for our sweet seniors to be able to book a sleepover if they have not visited us within 6 months.

Current pet clients over the age of 15 are able to book day boarding and grooming services readily as well, and we require a dayboarding visit and a vet approval to book for a sleepover if we have not seen your golden year pup within 3 months.

We always monitor your pet’s mood, energy levels, and food & water intake while they are staying with us, and we are extremely diligent with our senior clients. If we notice anything abnormal with your older pet, we make sure to contact you and/or whomever else is on file so that we can keep you informed and do our absolute best to keep your furry family as comfortable as possible! To be able to monitor our elderly pets proficiently, we have added the day boarding visits listed above so that we can assess their current baseline health, emotions, and determine whether or not our facility is still the most comfortable for your senior pet!

Puppies can be brought to our facility for socialization as soon as they receive all of their big boy/big girl shots. These include their last set of boosters including Rabies, DHLPP, and Bordetella. We encourage that any puppy that may/will need professional grooming performed on their coat get booked with us as soon as they have all of their vaccines. Socialization and desensitization to a facility environment and the grooming process is essential when your puppy is young to foster a good relationship with our staff and their spaw days. For a puppy’s first groom, we also generally recommend sanitary trims to keep them from needing to be on the table for longer than their wiggly bodies can handle!

Mats vs Tangles:

A tangle is hair that has been lightly entrapped onto itself or twisted with a few strands of hair.

A mat is typically composed of several tangles, which represent a mass of hair. Mats often have a sponge-like texture since the hair fibers have woven themselves tightly together. Mats can contain dirt, oil from the skin, and moisture. The longer mats remain in your dog’s coat, the mat has more time to tighten onto itself and pull more hair into the mat, which can cause pain & discomfort.

Factors that can increase your dog’s chances of forming a mat (or a mat tightening/expanding further into the coat):

As soon as you notice tangles, or sponge-like matting on your dog, we urge our clients to bring their pets in to either brush out the tangle or light matting to prevent the spot from worsening. Some mats are easier to remove than others, but the ease of removal cannot be determined until one of our professional groomers is able to feel the mat and how close it is to the skin. Mats can tighten all the way to the skin and when they do this, they can prevent oxygen, water and soap from reaching the surface. The tightness of the mat can also pull at the skin (think of a super tight ponytail, but not being able to take it out), and can also restrict blood flow from circulating fully in the patch of skin that is underneath the mat. Once a mat is tightened to this point, we cannot safely remove it with combs, brushes, or dematting tools, and we only offer to shave the mats off of the skin. The reason that we only shave out tight, to the skin mats, is to make sure that the skin still has integrity after the mat is removed. When thinking of the tight pony tail analogy, imagine the tight ponytail pulling your face taught and moving your skin, this is exactly what your pet’s skin is experiencing beneath the matting, and since our groomers cannot see how displaced the skin is underneath, we only use blades to take the matting off since it is a flat surface and have a much lower chance of catching the skin. Removing mats with shears, scissors, or thinning shears have a high likelihood of gashing the skin that has been pulled forward, which is why we do not use these tools on tight matting.

What to expect of your dog’s skin after it must be shaved due to matting:

Matting can hide pre-existing skin conditions that could be revealed once it is removed. This can include:

*Their skin may be pink from blood flow returning to areas that were affected

*If the ear is heavily matted, the blood rushing to the tips of the ears can cause the tips of the ear leather to rupture.

When we do your consultation for your pet and we notice matting, we will make you aware of what your options are for the mat removal and the style of haircut that is feasible. If we do not notice matting upon check-in and then notice before the bath, we will contact you to go over your options. If our groomers only give you the option of shaving out the matting or a complete shave down and you do not wish to have this service performed on your pet, you are able to refuse service and pick up your pet from our facility or cancel your appointment during the consultation.

We will turn away severe matting cases that we feel need a sedation or medical grooming, while this rarely happens, it is a possibility depending on severity and how much pain a dog may be presenting.

All of our matting protocols are to ensure that we are promoting safe practices for your pet, their skin, and their coat.

Royal Treatment wants to encourage all clients that have long haired and double/triple coated dogs to brush & comb at home regularly, and establish a routine grooming schedule rotating between baths, sanitary grooms, and full service grooms. If you cannot brush at home, or do not feel comfortable, we also offer brush and comb-outs at a cheaper rate than a full therapeutic bath experience! Combining all of these maintenance routines can allow you to create and maintain the style that you want for your perfect pup’s look, while upkeep their skin and coat health!

We ask all of our clients to notify us of any illnesses, symptoms, or diagnoses that their pet has received if they’re under our care. This includes non-communicable diseases like arthritis, allergies, cancer, or prone to seizure episodes. Knowing any and all health conditions that your pet has or is developing is helpful for the company and for our staff to look out for any concerning changes in your pet’s physicality or behaviors. We believe that open communication between both parties is key and we want to help you and your kiddo as much as we can.

If your pet has been diagnosed with a communicable disease (an illness that can spread from one animal to another or to humans), please keep your pet at home and contact our front desk as soon as you are able. If Royal Treatment gets a report of a communicable disease (even if the pet may have possibly caught it from a place other than our facility), we immediately begin deep cleaning the facility with Rescue. While we regularly clean with Simple Green D Pro 5, Zep, Rescue (a vet-grade disinfectant), and pre-schedule deep cleans to be proactive, we would also like the opportunity to be responsive to diminish any remaining chances that a communicable disease could be spread between our pet clients. Once your pet is diagnosed with a communicable disease, we require our clients to wait to make any reservations or appointments until your pet is no longer showing any symptoms of what they were diagnosed with and have vet approval to be reintroduced to a population of other pets. We have these precautions in place to keep your pet and others safe, along with our vaccination requirements.

If your pet is checked in to our facility and we begin noticing signs of any communicable diseases or noncommunicable conditions that are concerning, you will be notified immediately to retrieve your pet, and we may fill out a vet recommendation form to inform you what we noticed in writing, and you are more than welcome to take those observations to your veterinarian. We will also contact our veterinary consultant on any steps that we need to take while your pet is at the facility and inform you of any measurements taken before pick-up or during.

If your pet is in our facility for a sleepover and you are not able to retrieve your pet, but we have high levels of concern, we will have you contact your emergency contact that you leave upon check-in and on your pet’s profile, or we can contact them if you are unavailable. We would ask the emergency contact to either pick up your pet or transport them to a veterinarian (depending on what you have discussed with your emergency contact prior to your trip or discuss with them after we have expressed concerns).

Since we do not have veterinary training or tools at our facility, we always ask that owners leaving out of town have a point of contact close enough that they can aide in any rare emergency situation that your pet may have. If you do not have any contacts to leave, please let us know and you are able to leave a veterinarian’s office as a first point of contact if you are unavailable and allow them to make medical decisions for your pet on your behalf.

Royal Treatment asks that any emergency contact that is left for your pet’s stay is a contact that does have the power to make decisions for your pet should an unforeseen circumstance arises

In the extremely rare event that your pet has a life-threatening medical event while in our care, we may rush your pet to the vet while simultaneously contacting you to make you aware of the situation. In events like this, time would be of the essence, and we would rather make haste to a clinic than wait any longer than necessary.

Rare events like this are another reason why we ask for your pet’s medical history, allergies, intolerances, etc. so that we can give a detailed as possible medical history for your pet to whatever veterinarian we may have to rush to.

After your pet receives surgery, we require your veterinarian’s approval to be able to book your pet for any services with us. Additionally, we require that all sutures from the surgery site are removed or fully dissolved before participating in play or receiving a spa service. We wish to prevent any surgery sites from becoming increasingly irritated by your pet over-exerting themselves during playtime or shampooing an area that is healing from surgery. If you have any questions for us about the specific timeline of your pet’s ability to return to normal activities, please talk with your veterinarian.

Royal Treatment requires the following vaccines:

-Rabies (State Required)

–DHLPP

-Bordetella*

-Lepto (only required separately if your veterinarian does not include it in your DHPP combo, make sure to ask and clarify)

*Bordetella is a canine respiratory illness somewhat similar to the human flu/cold. There are many strains of Bordetella. Dogs are particularly susceptible when under stress (particularly when separated from their family) or have underdeveloped immune systems. Thus the name “Kennel Cough” being the colloquial term. Vaccines that are available cover most, but not all forms/strains of Bordetella (much like the human cold & flu vaccine). We ask that you request a 6-month vaccination from your veterinarian to be best covered, but also respect whichever vaccine your veterinarian recommends is best for your pet as an individual. When bringing your pet to a facility like ours, there is always the chance that your furry family member could contract bordetella or another communicable disease. While we have strict cleaning, monitoring protocol and vaccination requirements to keep everyone in our facility safe, we cannot one hundred percent guarantee that your pet will not contract any illnesses from visiting us.

For the safety of your pet and others, we require proof of up-to-date vaccinations from a licensed veterinarian. All vaccines must be administered to your pet 24 hours prior to visiting our facility to make sure that the vaccination has had enough time to fully enter your pet’s system, as well as making sure that your pet will not have an adverse reaction to the vaccine or adverse behaviors related to their veterinarian appointment.

We require all of our clients that are boarding overnight with us to make sure that all vaccines are in date upon check-in and throughout their boarding stay to help protect them and all of our other visiting pets.

Royal Treatment’s priority is to keep everyone, including our clients, their pets, and our staff members as safe as possible. While we do not ever want a kiddo to experience a medical anomaly in our care and we do our due diligence to prevent those instances as much as we possibly can, we do have protocols in place for our staff to follow to keep your pet safe and to keep you, the owner, informed.

Medical Anomalies:

Anomalies include diarrhea, vomiting, foreign objects previously in the digestive tract being regurgitated or defecated, dehydration, unusual lack of appetite or out of character signs of stress.

As stated in our health condition section, these are the steps that we follow when we notice a medical emergency or anomaly.

*Contact you, the owner, as soon as possible, while having another member of staff contact our consulting veterinarian. If we are able to get into contact with you, you will be informed of the situation and make a decision on behalf of your pet. However, if we feel that your pet needs to be picked up from the facility for their health, we will ask that someone retrieve them. The retrieval from our facility will be mandated whether or not you decide to bring your pup for a check up at your veterinarian. You will be given a vet attention form detailing what we observed so that you can take those observations to the vet if need be. We also keep those records in your pets profile so that we can refer back to any forms filled out as needed.

*If we cannot reach you, we will contact the Emergency Contact on file or Emergency Contact left for the stay.

*If Emergency Contact is not able to be reached, we will consult with the veterinarian that we have on file.

*After consulting with your personal veterinarian, we will follow the guidelines given to us by that facility. If your vet believes that the matter is a state of urgency, we will try to contact you and/or the emergency contact by any means possible, but if we cannot get in touch, we may transport your animal to the vet facility that you have on file or a veterinary hospital closest to us depending on urgency and distance between your regular veterinarian and our facility.

Medical Emergencies:

Emergencies are categorized by behaviors that are extremely concerning to our staff and/or our consulting veterinarian. Symptoms that present like a seizure, stroke, loss of consciousness, sundowners, or bloat will be treated as a dire emergency. This protocol goes as follows:

*Our staff will follow protocol that is taught to them to keep the animal as comfortable as possible and prevent the pet from hurting themselves further.

*Contact you, the owner, as soon as possible, while having another member of staff contact our consulting veterinarian. We can either transport the animal ourselves or allow you to retrieve your pet to bring them to the hospital.

*If we cannot get into contact with you, we will be transporting your animal to the closest open veterinarian that we trust. Our staff will be continually trying to contact you and your emergency contact during this time.

*Once at a veterinarian office we would give the vets all of the information that we know and the events that we witnessed to help them assess what may be going on. Once at the vet, we will let you know what office your pet is at if we have not been able to reach you and keep you informed as soon as we are updated.

*If the emergency is deemed severe and we feel that we cannot wait before transporting your animal to a medical facility, we will begin transport and either the transporter or our front desk staff will begin contacting you in every way possible.

*Pick up will then be facilitated at the veterinarian office.

Payment for your reservation or appointment at Royal Treatment that may need to be collected will not be charged until the pre-anticipated time of departure from our facility. At this time, we would be getting into contact with you about payment, or if we cannot get into touch with you, we may run the card that we have on file for any services that were completed.

Aggression Towards Staff:

While we pride ourselves in working with animals of all sizes, shapes, and temperaments, and making sure that we keep the dogs in our care comfortable with our facility and our staff, we have had a small number of pets that want their family (and no one else) to take care of them. If your dog is prone to anxiety around strangers (including if your dog tends to be more male stranger wary), please detail this in their profile or let us know when making an appointment, and/or at check in. If we are aware of any predispositions towards strangers, we can try our best to accommodate your pet and keep them as comfortable as possible while settling into the facility. However, since we pride ourselves in having a diverse staff, we cannot take any animals that are outwardly aggressive towards strangers or specific stranger triggers (aggression against men is more common in these cases) to be able to keep our staff safe. When pets begin to show signs of being very uncomfortable with our staff, we will notify the owner as soon as possible and try to come up with a game plan to minimize that stress or anxiety. If your pet is exhibiting these behaviors and are in for a grooming appointment or a daily visit, we will ask that you come to collect them for the day. Sometimes dogs just have bad days like we do, and we could try again at a later date! If the pet is with us for a sleepover, and it is not the day they are expected to check-out, we will contact you to see if there is anything that we could do to make them more comfortable.

We strive to be as pre-emptive as possible, such as playing calming music in our suiteways and our condo room, but we do offer the option of calming treats for those that may want or need it to help them feel more relaxed!

Instances that warrant immediate pick up of your pet:

If your pet must be picked up due to aggression, our staff will be instructed not to interact with the animal, and you will be asked to come into the back of our facility to retrieve your animal to reduce further stress to them and minimize injury risk to our employees. If your pet is boarding, we will ask that you or another trusted person come collect the animal within the day.

If you would like to book a first-time boarding stay with us and your pet has anxiety, separation anxiety, stranger wariness, or minimal socialization, we ask that you book one or several day boarding visits with us to see how your pet adjusts to our facility first! This way, your pet can become familiar with our staff before being with us overnight for their sleepover and may reduce stress when the time for that reservation comes. We also ask that you leave a good emergency contact so that we are able to have someone collect your kiddo in the event that they are not enjoying their time with us despite our best efforts.

Ice Storms, Tornadoes, Tropical Storms & Hurricanes:

We typically close our lobby for a half or a full day the day before or of whatever natural phenomenon that is expected to affect the Baton Rouge area. On these days, we will reschedule all daily appointments and reservations and only open the lobby for overnight boarding check-outs. We call to inform all owners of our current sleepover pets to give them the option to get them collected or stay at our facility. While we are in the midst of extreme weather, we will have at least one member of management sleep over at the facility with any overnight pups that could not be collected by friends or family of the owners to ensure their safety as much as possible.

If for any reason our area would receive an evacuation notice, our staff would contact you and emergency contacts to try to have a familiar person retrieve them and be able to bring them to their evacuation site. If there is no one available to collect your pet, we may evacuate your pet with us to keep them and us as safe as possible with your permission. If Royal Treatment gets notice of a storm that may have us evacuate, however, we will prevent any further bookings in our facility for the duration of that storm.

Our yards are lined with solid wooden fences that are 8 feet tall, along with double gates at the end of our yard, and between the two yards that we use. We have dog gates at each entrance to our yards from the building as well to keep all dogs in the areas that they are designated to be in! We also keep our smoke detectors up to date, with a built in sprinkler system to help squash any potential fires. We keep our fire extinguishers up to code and un-obscured so that our staff can react quickly to any potential flames. All of our doors to the outside of the building are locked and double checked at the end of the night, with a security alarm that will notify the police, emergency services, and our management team of any potential issues, smoke detection, or suspicious activities.