Nobody finds it fun to leave a dog at home the whole day. That is why university employee Nicolette Hollands wants to start a doggy day care on campus.

You drive to the university, drop your kid at the childcare centre and leave your dog at the dog kennel just one door down. At the end of your workday you pick everyone up and drive homewards. Does it get any easier?

If it is up to Nicolette Hollands, this will soon be reality. She wants to start a doggy day care on the university campus – there is already a childcare centre. To see if there is any interest, she placed a message on the Supply and Demand section of Radboudnet, the internal website of Radboud University. She also sent out a mailing. Dog owners reacted with tons of enthusiasm, she says. And students showed interest as well.

‘Petting a dog reduces stress’

‘Petting a dog reduces stress’, Hollands explains. ‘I think it would be amazing if we could organise it in such a way that students can come by and spend time with the dogs.’

Corona dogs

A win-win situation, the employee of Campus & Facilities thinks. She came up with the idea when she read articles about dogs being purchased during the pandemic, but when their owners returned to their offices, they were left abandoned. ‘A day care at work seems like the perfect solution. During your lunchbreak, you can even walk your own dog.’

Hollands already proposed her plan to her boss but was told to first see if there is any interest. So she is doing that right now via Radboudnet, among other things. Personally, she thinks of a place where thirty dogs can be taken care of daily, in different packs. With a nice place to run around outside and an indoor area with couches and dog baskets ‘like a living room’.

‘Very accessible’, she says. ‘We do not have to build a new building or such. I already have some locations in mind.’

Which locations, she wants to keep to herself for now. First she wants to get on with her preliminary investigation. Her own dog, an adopted stray from Bulgaria named Maia, already thinks it would be wonderful to come along to work, Hollands thinks. ‘I image her standing at the gate, wagging her tail as a way to welcome everyone.’