Tiki Tails Dog Resort has begun using its new facility at 4420 SE 16th Place and welcomes the community to its grand opening on Jan. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Attendees will have an opportunity for discounts and specials, as well as to take home some prizes. PROVIDED
A popular spot for K-9 companions to be cared for while owners are away will officially open a brand new facility next weekend.
Tiki Tails Dog Resort in Cape Coral has recently started using its new facility for those they care for, and welcome the community to its grand opening on Jan. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Tiki Tails Dog Resort has begun using its new facility at 4420 SE 16th Place and welcomes the community to its grand opening on Jan. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PROVIDED
Owners Brandon and Kayleigh Perau have had to jump quite a few hurdles to get this facility open with permitting and hurricane damage during construction, but are thrilled to finally see it come to fruition and to see the impact it will have for the business and the dogs that stay with them.
The new building, which is located right next to their existing location, boasts 8,4000 square feet of indoor space, 5,200 additional square feet outdoors, and 50 suites for dogs.
“It was significant upgrade with usable space,” Brandon Perau said. “We built this facility to be a dog resource. We have the trench drains in the floor, so when we’re cleaning and sanitizing, we can wash everything right down the drains.
Tiki Tails Dog Resort has begun using its new facility at 4420 SE 16th Place and welcomes the community to its grand opening on Jan. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Attendees will have an opportunity for discounts and specials, as well as to take home some prizes. PROVIDED
“We upgraded our daycare space indoors, which obviously is all air conditioned. I think we upgraded that by almost three times more space for indoor daycare than we have in our current building. So that’s going to be a huge upgrade, especially come season when we get a lot of people that do daycare with their dogs because they come down here for the winter, so that is their vacation. We more than doubled our square footage for the outdoor play areas, which are all turf. A major upgrade is we have a covered outdoor area now.”
Perau said the new facility has an eight-foot block wall to secure all the dogs onto the property outside, and that they put a steel framed metal roof above.
“So now, no matter what the weather is — rain, thunderstorms, anything like that, the dogs are protected,” he said. “We don’t have to worry about trying to get the dogs out when it’s raining. Owners don’t want the dogs to go home wet.”
Tiki Tails Dog Resort has begun using its new facility at 4420 SE 16th Place and welcomes the community to its grand opening on Jan. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PROVIDED
An additional major upgrade is Tiki Tails now has one wing of the building that is just for private boarding dogs, Perau said.
“Those would be the dogs that board with us that cannot do daycare maybe because they are not spayed or neutered,” he said. “Or they don’t pass an evaluation that would necessarily allow them to be in our daycare setting, or maybe the owners just don’t want them in daycare. We’ve turned people away since we’ve been open for six-and-a-half years that had those specific six-and-a-half years that had those specific dogs that needed the private boarding. Now we’re able to offer that. We already have dogs boarding in there, utilizing the new feature. And we also did three different sized kennels for boarding now.”
Tiki Tails’ largest suites are now 6-feet by- 8-feet. Those suites also have cameras that the owners can access as their dogs are boarding.
“The owner’s are able watch them,” Perau said. “We let them out individually, get some play time with the attendant. It’s just something that we’ve never been able to offer before. We would have always turned people away because we couldn’t offer it.”
Tiki Tails will still use its original building, which Perau said will also undergo a remodel in the near future.
“We’ll be able to use both of them during our very busy times, which would be your Thanksgiving, your Christmas time, and then surprisingly, which always throws people off, is summertime is actually our busiest time of the year,” he said. “Just because everybody that lives here will take those vacations back up north for a week or so to go see their friends or family, or they may do like a little staycation in Florida for a few days. So we’ve actually always filled up every weekend during the summer. So there’ll be quite a bit of times during the year that we’ll probably utilize both buildings.”
Perau said he felt it was time to take a step in this direction mainly due to the fact the original building wasn’t built to board dogs, it’s something they turned it into from the existing business in there prior. This new space, he said, was fully designed for dogs to have the best possible experience.
“We try to keep a very good reputation around here,” he said. “When we do fill up and have to turn people away — it started to get to a point where I understand the business side of things, where that’s a good problem to have, and sometimes you can actually make less money growing.”
Perau said after the shift of people that moved to Southwest Florida during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with two major projects in the city in The Cove and Bimini project, it was time for additional space.
“Over the last year, our clientele is just significantly grown,” he said. “So I don’t want to say I saw it coming, but when the what’s solidified us pulling the trigger was really when I saw (those downtown projects) were progressing and they had opening dates that they were going to start putting people in there and that they were dog friendly. Those two projects are, within like a half-a-mile from us.”
Tiki Tails offers boarding, daycare, grooming, and all dogs that board there get to experience free daycare.
“We want the dogs still active while they’re boarding,” Perau said. “So they get to play with the other dogs and then, if for some reason they can’t do it, five times each day is dedicated to going out to play with an employee, get some time outside. We just try to separate ourselves from the competition where it’s more about the dogs. We kind of just feel that we should do everything right to give a dog what should be a luxury stay.
“You’re taking their dog out of their home environment, you want them as comfortable as possible. Tiki Tails, I think, is doing a very good job, especially with the staff we have and the feedback from our clients.”
The grand opening on Jan. 4 will see attendees have the opportunity for discounts and specials, as well as to take home some prizes.
Tiki Tails Dog Resort is at 4420 SE 16th Place.
For more information, visittikitailsdogresort.com.
To reach CJ HADDAD, please email cjhaddad@breezenewspapers.com