Fifteen years after it opened in West Los Angeles, The Wags Club is bringing its version of dog care to Dallas, and the transplant is a full second club rather than a franchise sign on a kennel. The doors open Saturday, November 14 at 1740 Empire Central, in the Stemmons Corridor near Love Field.
Opening day is a premiere: red carpet, a photographer on arrivals, tours all day, and tutus encouraged.
The hotel model
Nothing at the club runs on kennel logic. Days are cage-free, spent in playgroups matched by temperament, with a private-play option for dogs who would rather keep their own company, and overnight guests sleep in one of 100 private suites with staff on site all night. Every team member is picked by hand and trained in dog behavior, pet first aid and hospitality-level service, because the club takes its cues from five-star hotels and staffs like it.
The template is the Los Angeles original at 11860 Mississippi Avenue, 12,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space with real grass, pools and shaded cabanas, and a Zen Den where overnight guests lounge. More than 12,000 dogs have come through that door since 2011. Co-founder and CEO Abi De Silva built the club around her own dogs, Noorie and Maya, and Dallas is the first time the model leaves California.
The Dallas list runs daycare, boarding, grooming and training, with separate programs for big dogs and small dogs, and hours of 7 to 7 on weekdays, 9 to 5 on weekends.
Memberships, with blackout dates
Walk-in pricing stays plain: $40 buys a full day of daycare, $25 a half day, $30 a weekend day, and boarding runs $60 a night for one dog.
Boarding drops to $55 per dog when two or more dogs stay, daycare included, but the memberships are where the club shows its hand. Bronze runs $425 for 10 daycare visits and a bath, Silver $850 for 20 visits, a boarding night and a bath, and Gold $1,200 for 30 visits, four boarding nights and two baths. Platinum flips the formula at $1,575: 30 boarding nights and two baths, built for owners who travel.
A puppy special runs $600 for dogs four to nine months old, spent inside 30 days, and every tier expires six months out. The complimentary visits and nights cannot be used on the holiday weeks, Thanksgiving and Christmas among them.
Admission is the filter, and it is a real one. A dog has to be at least 16 weeks old and current on rabies, distemper and parvo, canine influenza, leptospirosis and Bordetella, with the Bordetella shot renewed every six months. Then comes the temperament test, 30 minutes to four hours, which decides the playgroup. The club states plainly that dogs which are aggressive toward people or other dogs, dominant or severely anxious are not admitted.
A free week to open
For opening week the rate drops to zero. Daycare is free from November 14 to 20 for dogs signed up in advance, and the free days end on November 20 for every dog, subject to availability. The dog still has to qualify: a free temperament evaluation, passed, and vaccinations current. The club is taking sign-ups now through its Dallas page.
The club is also cutting special rates for Dallas-area rescue groups fostering dogs, and introducing corporate pricing for companies that want dog care on the benefits list. Both offers are new with the Dallas club.
Inside the club
Editor’s take
Dallas already keeps private clubs for golf, for dining and for closing deals, so a club for dogs is less a novelty than a market finding its level. The carpet and the suites are the visible part. What a Wags membership sells is the door: an admissions interview, a vaccination file and a blackout calendar add up to certainty about the other dogs in the room, and certainty is the one thing a kennel never stocked.