Happy Mailman

This is my puppy, @kali.ladydog’s favourite place in Austin. Beyond favourite. She perks up when she hears me say «want to go to happy mailman?» And walks right from the car to the front door without need of a leash. The staff here is so friendly and they totally love the dogs they care for. I’ve seen some around town and they come up to greet Kali, and her tail whips back and forth because she’s SO happy to see them too! We love Happy Mailman!

I just found blisters on both of my dogs back paws. Not going to take him back as I think it is from the hot gravel.

The staff at Happy Mailman 290 rocks.
David is always eager to take care of us and our dogs come home happy and healthy.
Our 14yr old lab doesn’t get around so well anymore but she gets all the love when we have to be away. I can’t thank these people enough, especially David.

So, when I finally went to pick my dog, he was clean and the job was well done. The groomer didn’t charge for the bath cause of the inconvenience caused to me and advised that the this location has limited resources to handle a goldendoodle kinda dogs. The owner seemed nice to send a apology note and even offered a refund, which they did already!

I cannot rave enough about this place! I have been boarding my dog here since she was a puppy (now 2) and they are always welcoming and my dog leaves happy. They do a wonderful job building relationships with the dogs, and pairing them in appropriate play groups. I have boarded my Shiba (a somewhat persnickety breed to say the least) elsewhere and she is always dying to leave. Here I have to pull her away. Keep up the good work!

Great daycare and boarding facility! We have been a patron of Happy Mailman for 5 years and have never had a bad experience. The staff is pleasant, attentive, and responsive (they’ll return your voicemails promptly). The dogs receive plenty of exercise and are well monitored. Our dog has never picked up a flea, kennel cough, or any other virus from this facility — which isn’t true for all places. The rates may be a bit higher than others, but you get what you pay for.

Having recently moved here from Portland after 12 years I’ve been on the hunt for a second home for my dog while we are out of town. He is a 6 year old English Springer Spaniel. He has a lot of energy and mixes with all types of dogs-​even toy breeds. We were really grateful to have «A Dogs Life Daycare» in the NW, and I wanted someplace I could trust!
The person I spoke to on the phone was nonchalant about scheduling us for an interview, and briefly mentioned it is a full day of day care for evaluation. I thought of that as strange but went through all the hassle anyway. When getting there a sign on the office door read «Office Closed» so I walked around to the back of the building where I could hear really intense dog action. The area is a large not well kept shop with a few sectioned off areas. It was open to an outside area with dog runs and other sectioned off areas. There were single dogs in several of the sectioned off areas in direct sun without a play mate or supervision. The outside area consisted of all dirt. No grass.
While trying to get his documents faxed over I had time to witness a few heated dog interactions. The lady was yelling at the dogs to get them to settle down meanwhile turning her back to the other half of the dogs. It wasn’t bad, but I could see it grow from there into something more fairly easily having several aggressive breed dogs there as well.
I have nothing bad to say about an aggressive breed dog, but supervision and skilled staff is necessary with any larger sized group of dogs…
My gut wasn’t pleased. Somehow, my documents weren’t faxed from my extremely timely vet back home. I used that as my excuse to leave.
There was another pure pit puppy walking into the door as I left. The owner said he’s been going there for a few months. I hope these dogs are not becoming more aggressive here while in this loose environment.
I found an exceptional facility in downtown off of 5^th that has a vet, groomer and shop on site. Yes, it is $ 14 more per night: but my dog is going to be in complete luxury… far away from the dirt field of Happy Mailman.

THIS PLACE SAVED ME FROM HAVING TO GIVE UP MY DOG TO A SHELTER! I can never thank them enough for taking in my dog, Rocky, and partnering with the Austin Pets Alive PASS program (preventive animal shelter surrender). I was in transition after a pretty traumatic life change and was new to Austin but not yet on my own. I cried so much just thinking about giving rocky up since I had nowhere to take him! I found out he was accepted by Happy Mailman and they would take him in for a FULL MONTH! I don’t think they will ever know how much I appreciated their kindness they showed toward me but taking in Rocky free of charge. Rocky had so much fun during his time there and loved the puppy play time he had all day! Happy Mailman is a great place to take your pups for some puppy daycare or boarding. I always recommend them to friends to use and I will look to them for future boarding and daycare services for Rocky! I am so blessed to be reunited with my puppy and finally stable again to have my home back together! Obviously, I can’t say enough good things about Happy Mailman. Try it out for yourself, you won’t regret it! The staff cares for your pets like their own. They won’t ever want to leave!

Love this place… more importantly, my lab (Molly) loves this place!

Happy Mailman is the best– my pup Watson absolutely loves coming here for daycare, and comes home exhausted from playing all day. It’s also the only place I feel comfortable boarding him when I’m away, the staff take amazing care of the dogs, and he loves every member of the team. He doesn’t even look back when I drop him off, he’s too busy running in to play. Happy Mailman is an absolute gem!

Love this place! My dogs love this place. They are always happy to run in to the back as soon as we get there, and are happy to see us and exhausted for at least 24 hours after we get home.
The first time I brought my newly-​adopted puppy (now just a little over a year ago) he was a little scratched up and behaved kind of stand offish around other dogs for about a week. it was his first time being in that kind of environment, and luckily I took another chance with them because since then it’s been great.
Super easy to make a reservation with them, and they are flexible about pick up times (we’ve had to come home a day or two early from trips before and they were happy to get our dogs ready for pickup early — and appreciative of a heads-​up over the phone).

So after searching long and hard, I found this place to be the only doggy daycare to not discriminate against any breeds. Having a mix pup, it was disappointing to find such a liberal city to have such a narrow mind.
Ok anyways. Contacting HM was super easy and after a little confusion about when my puppys interview would be, I dropped him off for the day. They were super excited to see him and welcomed him like he was their own. I didn’t know that they offered daycare lunchtime so I didn’t bring anything, but whitney made it not a big deal at all and my growing puppy got his lunch from their food supply. When we picked him up he was EXHAUSTED, he tried hard to be excited but just passed out in the car.
Today we picked him up from a three day– two night stay, and it is obvious he had a blast. When we pulled up he was out with the big dogs still having fun, and when we got him back he was happy, tired, and dusty.(they offer baths, we just don’t mind the aftermath of super playtime). They gave us a little rundown of how his stay was and even washed his bedding. Before we left, our puppy ran to Whitney to say bye, making it obvious that he liked HM as much as they liked him. I’d highly recommend happy mailman, and couldn’t be happier that such a great company doesn’t support BSL stigmas.

I have revised my rating. My dogs were happy there and that’s great. I’ll still look for another place where I can rely on having them bathed so I don’t have to after a trip, etc. Or cause pain to my back (2 surgeries… so washing them is not good for me).
I’d challenge the staff/​owner to survey (surveymonkey is free!) about their «cologne». I’m not the only one who dislikes it and has to wash their dog after they have already washed it. Or, feel free to bath/​cologne my dogs and keep them in your car or apt overnight and see if you don’t feel the same as I do about how horrible it smells.
Boarding is great. I would not want them to bathe my dog or rely on them to even do it though.

Happy mailman is the greatest! My dog Maeby loves coming here, she doesn’t even say bye to me as she rushes into the facility. The employees are always friendly and very helpful (even when I am away and calling to check on my dog). I can tell that Zach and his crew are very passionate about there work and love all the dogs that come in. I love that they pay special attention to the interactions of the dogs and put them into different play groups according to their temperaments. I boarded Maeby (my very sweet yellow lab) at another facility because it was closer proximity and was very disappointed. My dog not only coward as we walked into the small indoor facility but when we picked her up she ran away, literally straight out the door. I will only board her at this wonderful facility and applaud all the staff that works there.
SINCERELY
THANK YOU HAPPY MAILMAN!
P. S. i love the photos that are live action shots of our dogs at play (:

Love, Love, Love Them! My dogs were SO happy and tired when I picked them up from boarding at Happy Mailman. The girls at the front were great. My dogs had only been in once for a play date and the office remembered not to put them in a kennel together. WOW! The girl at the desk asked when I picked up if that was right because she remembered that from a month ago. FANTASTIC! Zack is awesome and loves what he does … it shows!

I recently adopted a rescue dog and use Happy Milkman for dog daycare. Everyone is very friendly, truly dog lovers, and our dog loves going there. She comes home exhausted, happy and appears to not have much separation anxiety as she loves her time there. Zach has done a great job of getting the right people.
Followup, I have never seen so many dogs so happy to arrive at Happy Mailman. What a great place!

I’ll have to admit that I’m a very protective puppy mom — with that in mind, we love taking our little one here for boarding. The people that work there are always very polite and has grown to know our dog… she gets super excited when she arrives and comes home happy and tired. I have tried a ton of places all over Austin, and here are the reasons why I would and have recommended Happy Mailman:
1. The dogs get to play all day in both indoor and outdoor facilities
2. Puppy nap time — they bring them into an air conditioned room for nap/​feed time from 1 – 3
3. The staff is very nice and attentive
4. Someone is always on premise
5. Our pup loves it here
6. Reasonably priced

We’ve tried almost all the doggy boarding places in Austin and this one is by far our favorite. We’ve been coming to Happy Mailman even before the new ownership and I have to say it’s only gotten better since. It’s reasonably priced, the owner is really friendly, and most importantly they always take great care of our dog during her stays. We love how open the property is and the fact that there’s always someone on premise. Sure sometimes our dog will come home with some minor play battle marks but it’s never anything serious. Besides our little pug is one bundle of playful energy and probably instigates most of it anyways. We’ve actually left her here for more than 2 weeks while we were travelling abroad. Everything was perfectly fine when we got her. Take your dog here for boarding or daycare, they’ll come home exhausted but happy.

This place used to be the bomb. However it seems things have gone downhill. I tried called 2 – 3 times each day for a week to make a reservation. None of the calls were picked up, my voicemail was not returned. I sent an email and it was not replied to until 7pm before I needed to drop her off. Needless to say, I made other arrangements. This was never an issue before, there was always someone on the staff available.
Last summer I left my dog there, all the familiar faces were gone, and I waited 15min in the kennel area for someone to notice I was there. She came back with her paw pads severely damaged and peeling/​bloody from being out in the dirt (there is no grass) in 100+ degree weather. Clearly no one noticed and kept letting her play outside when she really should have been kept off her feet.
That coupled with reading the most recent reviews has made me too wary to bring her back again. The loss of the amazing staff I met during the first year seems to have affected the quality of the facility. I understand the need to cut back from a business standpoint, but it can go too far.

Well, I was a fan and I can tell my dog enjoys playing here but I have kind of serious concerns about the place.
Since I started going there 7 months ago, the staff has mostly all left and there is only 1 sweet guy working all the shifts it seems like. He is great, but the owner is hardly there and there is only 1 other small female manning all the dogs while he checks everyone in and out. Seems way under staffed.
Also I just learned that no one is there over night with the dogs. Turns out they put them in the cages at 7pm and dont get them out until 7am the next morning. 12 hours in a cage? Oh no! Sounds terrible to me… not to mention potential potty accidents or if a dog had a major unforeseen medical emergency, and is stranded in the cage for that many hours. Heaven forbid a fire started or something, no one would know until it was too late. :(
The other thing is whenever I get my dog home he’s always got a couple crazy cuts or scrapes. I am sure he’s fine and its just from playing too rough or little dog scuffles but these are frequent and kind of significant and the daycare never reports anything to me. My dog is big too so I wonder what the smaller pups come home with. This is actually why I started asking questions, because everything was always «just fine» when I went to pick him up, but then I’d find these crazy nicks and scrapes on him. Last time he stayed there for 2 weeks I found a cut that looked like another dogs tooth racked through his cheek and it was healing already but I am certain it bled because it looked deep. Again, I heard nothing about it and had to notice it myself while petting him on the ride home! Bummer…
I am the first one to say «a dog is a dog and he’s FINE», but I also want my dog and the dogs around him to be safe and really well taken care of.
I am sad to have to write this stuff because they all seem well meaning and to love dogs but its just way too little supervision and staffing for me. All things aside at least if someone was onsight over night I’d feel better. Or if they let them out even 1 time around 9pm to potty before bed… and for goodness sake, hire more people!