LAKEVILLE — Dog daycare and human daycare have a lot in common, said Julia Dixon, who owns the business Pet Recess at 36 Main Street in Lakeville. 

“Dogs are very much part of our family,” she explained. “A lot of people these days prefer to have furry children rather than two-legged children.”

Pet Recess provides grooming, boarding, and dog daycare. As its name suggests, during daycare the dogs have a lot of supervised playtime, although they take a break from noon to 2 p.m. for naptime.

Just like two-legged children, dogs can get bored if left to their own devices. 

“Bored dogs get up to mischief,” Dixon said. “They chew things. You don’t want to stick them in a kennel all day long because they’ll just get bored out of their minds.”

But at daycare centers like Dixon’s, dog owners can drop off their dogs in the morning and Dixon and her staff make sure the dogs play with other dogs instead of chewing on furniture.

Another similarity between dogs and children: Dixon says that the dogs end up making friends at her daycare.

“We have dogs who wait at the fences for their friends to arrive,” Dixon said. “Interestingly enough. I've been out walking with my dogs who have been in daycare, and our dogs will meet some other dogs on the walk and the dogs all know each other.”

“It's like: ‘Wait, your dogs seem to know each other, do you go to daycare?’ ‘Yeah, we go to Pet Recess,’” Dixon explained. “So they’re friends… I have actually become friends with people because my dogs became friends with their dogs.”

Caring for dogs is more than a job for Dixon. She volunteers for the Dogs and Cats of Antigua foundation, which helps combat dog overpopulation in the Caribbean island of Antigua by running spay and neuter clinics as well as bringing dogs to America to be adopted. Dixon even adopted a dog from the island herself. 

“I was out on the island… and I was just working: going around, picking up stray dogs, taking them to the sanctuary to be spayed or neutered, and whatever they asked us to do,” she recalled.

“There was this little dog… this dog was so afraid of everything, but for some reason she took to me. I don’t understand why, but over a period of four days, from literally not being able to touch her, she was coming up and trying to sit on my lap,” Dixon added. “I ended up bringing her back with me.”

Dixon also encourages dog owners to consider having their dogs donate blood as well.

“Two of my dogs donate blood,” Dixon explained. “They will bring the dog in, give them a little bit of sedation and then they donate blood.”

“It works the same as a human bank,” Dixon said.  “But dogs do it too.”