Summer camp is veering in a new direction — toward grown-ups and their dogs.
Nature walks, swimming and memory-making campfires (all dog-focused) are being augmented with agility training, cooking-for-canines instruction, bury-the-bone competitions and dozens of other activities for pooch-loving participants.
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"It's a great way to have 100% together time with your dog, enjoying nature and activities, instead of just feeding them and walking them," says Margaret Rapp of Arlington Heights, Ill. She attended Camp Dogwood in Ingleside, Ill., last year with Danny, her spaniel mix, and Ollie, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel who was a recent puppy mill rescue.
"Camp also gives you a chance to try many different things — without paying for eight sessions, as is the case at home," she says. She was surprised to learn at camp that Danny wasn't interested in flyball, though he did embrace other active-dog stuff. Ollie, on the other hand, preferred laze-about activities like massage (but he did work hard to pass his Canine Good Citizenship certification while there).
Camp Dogwood ($420 to $700 for three nights and four days, depending on the accommodations), held three times a year at an overnight camp for kids (when kid camp's not in session), is among a growing number of canine-and-owner retreats for active and inactive dogs and their people.
Join in — or not
"We keep some things the same every session," says Alysa Slay, a clinical psychologist who co-founded the Camp Dogwood sessions in 2001, "but we're always adding new things."
The scores of activities and lectures include water sports, herding, dog fur spinning and ask-the-vet sessions.
Most canine camps are held at waterfront facilities — rustic cabins and/or tent or RV sites — that serve as kid camps, music workshops or couples-counseling retreats most of the time but that occasionally go to the dogs.
Most limit participants to 20 to 100 humans plus their dogs (some allow two dogs per person), and many exclude kids younger than 18 on the grounds that a person keeping track of children isn't as able to bond with a dog in the ideal way.
Some campers partake of every offering they can cram in. But if the two- and four-legged clients just want to chill, that's fine. "If someone wants to sit under a tree with her dog or go for a stroll, just the two of them, that's just fine," says Lory Kohlmoos, director of Camp Winnaribbun, a three-times-a-year week-long camp in Stateline, Nev., on the shores of Lake Tahoe ($1,300 for lodging, meals and activities).
"Everyone learns a lot about themselves and about their dogs," Kohlmoos says, even if the humans skip some of the dozens of activities, which range from tracking to crafts to homeopathy sessions.
Happy campers keep coming back
As interest in the concept grows, so, too, do the kinds of venues. Minneapolis dog trainer Lisa Sellman organized her first three-night, four-day dog lovers' retreat at the upscale Gunflint Lodge in Grand Marais, Minn., in October, and response was sufficiently strong that seven have been scheduled for 2010 ($399 a person, which includes cushy accommodations, most meals and scads of dog activities).
The lodge has been dog-friendly since 1928 out of necessity, because dog sled teams were used to haul supplies, but during retreat times, the trails and conference rooms are filled with dogs and people participating in such things as "Doggie Socials," positive training classes and Sellman's demonstrations of Tellington TTouch, a form of body work that reduces the stress and tension of dogs.
Camps that have been around for a while have a huge return rate — 60% to 75% of their clientele each session are return campers, they say. The humans make friends they enjoy seeing again, and so do the dogs.
"Some of the dogs came for the first time as puppies," says Kohlmoos, whose Camp Winnaribbun celebrates its 16th season this year, "and then they're brought back when they are old and pulled around on a wagon so they can have one last time to enjoy the sunshine and water."
By Sharon L. Peters, Special for USA TODAY
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