ANIMAL MAGIC DOG CLUB
October (just) 2020 Newsletter
Our next Season of courses starts in January and will be available to book from early November.
Last week we posted the following on Facebook – in case you missed it:
“With Autumn comes Bonfire Night – new owners may not yet know the dreadful reaction dogs can have to fireworks. Close curtains, pro- vide treats, try not to leave your pet alone, calming, soothing smells, play distracting, muffling, sounds in the house! Make sure your house is secure! So many dogs run away in fear! Prepare yourselves and your wonderful companions it will soon be over.”
https://www.facebook.com/AnimalMagicDogClub/ How are we doing?
The Autumn season has shown a strong return by members as lockdown recedes, credits from lockdown have been cleared and we are fully back in business. Fingers crossed that lockdown won’t return…..
However, We have had TWO unfortunate occurrences recently:
ONE: Google Business suspended our account which means that we have gone from page one in Google searches to not existing….. This action by Google was arbitrary based upon requiring us to re-confirm our details and that was all we had to do to be reinstated, re-confirm our details, which hadn’t changed! The damage has been done. We were not made aware that our registration had been suspended and the process of climbing back in the rankings is a slow one. In a year when the Club went through months of having no income at all this is a real blow. We have no recourse with Google, this is not a service that you pay for, we are simply reinstated and then it’s up to us.
YOU CAN HELP!
Over the next few weeks PLEASE SEARCH FOR ‘ANIMAL MAGIC DOG CLUB’ in Google and follow through to the website from the search result. Also please go to Google Reviews and post a review, hopefully a decent one 🙂 🙂 😉
The way Google works this will help us climb the listings…. I am sure everyone appreci- ates that new clients are our lifeblood and keep us going as not everyone goes on to fur- ther classes or into agility. Please spare us a few minutes for this Google can make or break a small business like AMDC.
TWO: After completing and eight week course and after allowing a further six weeks to pass a member decided to complain about elements of our service by posting a bad re- view of our service, having mentioned nothing during or since their course to anyone at the club. The rating was 3/5 which you might consider to be not too bad but more im- portantly to you and us what were those complaints about? Substantially; the lack of a poo bin, unfair judging of an end of course fun competition and unfriendly, treatment spe- cifically targeted towards the member by a member of staff. We obviously need to ad- dress these points:
- We make it very clear that we expect and ask all members to remove any excrement from site, just as they do in public areas and presumably their own property. We do not think this unreasonable at a location that is not public, where we are only tenants and where over one hundred dogs per week visit the club. All of our notes confirm this re- quirement, we are very open about this, circulate this before every course starts, and everyone else seems to understand. We have never had this raised before and never had a complaint.
- We are a fun Club, we don’t pretend to be competitive and approach every fun com- petition as a giggle at the end of a course, any award is always a bit tongue in cheek and may well go to the funniest performer over the best performer and this is generally understood. We want to be really clear about this, please don’t take things too seri- ously, there is no such thing in a fun competition for bias or cheating, it simply doesn’t work that way.
- We completely reject any accusation that any client is ever treated better or less well than any other but we do understand that for all people their perception is very much their reality and not all personalities fit each others expectation. If you have a concern at all about the club, about how the club interacts with you, how it is run, how you are left feeling, please, please, please talk to us at the time. We cannot address concerns that we are unaware of. A breakdown in communication can be addressed in an instant a bad review lasts a lifetime on social media, but then I imagine that was the intention. Give us a chance to respond to justified concerns first.
In combination with the Google fiasco we are hurting, however……
YOU CAN HELP! with this too…..
Reviews on Google, Facebook, Yell, wherever it is possible to review us help us im- press prospective clients and Google reviews will help return us to the first page of Google searches where we have been up until now. What works as well and pos- sibly even better is if you have a business or influence over any business website that is prepared to link to us: www.animal-magix.co.uk
Our Courses:
Our new Puppy Improvers Course was fully booked and went really well and was ter- rifically well received, thank you…. There will be more.
Bookings for courses starting in January will be available from early November. Our re- duced schedule of courses and reduced numbers per class have seen many courses fully book very quickly. Members will be notified as soon as the courses are up on the website and before they are publicly announced so that the opportunity to get what you want is there. please consider booking early to avoid disappointment.
Short courses and workshops
Our season of courses usually ends close to Christmas but the impact of Covid has thrown us out of synch. We are happy to look at overrunning Agility courses, putting on workshops. for special obedience issues, and look at any other suggestions that mem- bers might have? Please come back to us……
Puppy Foundation Courses – The extraordinary demand for these continues, we started the Autumn season with two courses and to date we have run seven, all fully booked. We would like to thank all of you for recommending the Club. It works! 🙂
YOU CAN HELP! and you have already…..
Yet again, a truly terrific response to our appeal for PACT Animal Sanctuary. We are try- ing to support Pact on an ongoing basis so please do keep it up – find them at: www.pactsanctuary.org Some members kindness has been truly extraordinary.
We are getting tremendous support and interest on Facebook where we go from strength to strength, with new followers from all parts of the country and most recently: Peru, Ma- laysia and South Korea!!! Possibly a bit far to travel for Martin’s Wednesday morning’s….. If you want to keep up with what is going on and see fun pictures of your own and others gorgeous dogs go to: https://www.facebook.com/AnimalMagicDogClub
Thank you for your great response and patience over to our COVID 19 protocols. For your information, so far we have only had to turn one member away with a pos- sible temperature (they were wonderfully understanding) which thankfully, it tran- spired, was nothing to do with the virus. It does prove the protocols are worthwhile. We have lost a couple of members who have gone back to shielding but we will catch up with them once this horror is resolved.
Always remember that this is your club, we listen to you and every opinion counts.
Bill.
www.animal-magix.co.uk/book-a-course https://www.facebook.com/AnimalMagicDogClub/
07720886742 – [email protected]
