Dear Lea,
I live in a small condo in Downtown Bellevue and am thinking of getting a dog. Is Downtown Bellevue a pet friendly place? I haven’t seen any pet stores around.
– Pondering a Puppy
Dear Pondering a Puppy,
If you’ve visited the Downtown Park recently, or driven around town during the work day, you would have seen plenty of puppies. Dogs of all ages and size play together on a daily basis in the Downtown Bellevue Park , and I have seen a number of different dog walkers trailing behind parades of dogs in this city.
People that live in Downtown Bellevue have everything they need: shopping, restaurants, gyms, nightli
fe, and of course their precious Yorkies. There is a market for small sweaters here, if you know what I mean…High-rise living is not stopping people from owning pets. As a pet owner myself, I have found it easy to find the pet resources I need within the Downtown Core.
There is a pet store called Pet Pros on Main Street, by King and I Thai Cuisine, that carries quality pet food, supplies, and toys. You can find leather collars for your dog in just about any pet store or online. Not far from King and I Thai Cuisine is the Bellevue Animal Hospital, for all of your veterinary needs. If you’re a cat owner, Bellevue has its very own Cat Care Clinic that specializes in feline health and living. If you need a sweater for your pup, a personalized dog tag, a rhinestone collar, a leather pet bed, or any other item to spoil your pet, Urban Dogs at Bellevue Square has a fun variety of dog-wear and accessories.
Most of the people I know who live with pets, use recommendations from friends or neighbors to find dog-walkers or pet-sitters. But, if word of mouth doesn’t get around to you, there are some local resources you could try out: LePouf Luxury Pet Care, Tabby Taxi, or No Worries 4 Pets.
When you get your puppy, a great place to start as a Bellevue dog owner is at BellevueDogs.org. It’s a Website dedicated to the neighbors and friends that live in Downtown Bellevue and meet up with their dogs at the Downtown Bellevue Park. The park is a great place to meet other dog-lovers and to socialize your new puppy (as long as it has had all it’s shots)!
Lea
What’s missing for your pet in Downtown Bellevue? Click through to leave a comment, or write me at lea@downtownbellevue.com. I’d love to hear from you!
great info lea. I just got a dog last week, didn’t know about all that was available.
Just an FYI despite appearances Downtown Park is not an off leash area.
DTB Park is not an off-lease area, you’re right! However, rumor has it that the City Council is in negotiations to allow designated off-leash times at the park on a daily basis.
You should be thankful for dog walkers.
Dog walkers and dogs are the most reliable and inexpensive security resource in society. With their daily presence in our parks and on our nature trails, they are the eyes and ears of the community, frequently the first to discover crime and consistently a deterrent to it. We should be encouraging the presence of dog walkers and their dogs rather than implementing public policies that restrict and prohibit them.
Good Dog !!
Many people think there dog would never hurt anyone and let them off the leash all over.
Then their perfect angel runs over and jumps on me. Then I step in doggie crap. Hurray for dogs!
Granted most dog owners are responsible, but I see plenty that are not and it’s frustrating.
Dear Lea,
Please tell your readers to NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TRUSTING THEIR BELOVED PETS WITH LE POUF PET CARE. I saw you recommended LePouf in an article, but I strongly advise you to retract that recommendation. In order to understand why I feel so strongly about warning your readers about this company, it is necessary to share our story…
We hired LePouf to provide overnight care for our pets while we were out of town for a week in May. It turns out our Le Pouf sitter lied to us profusely and did not even stay at our home…but that is minor relative to the fact that she also brought her dog into our home (against our explicit wishes) which resulted in a horrible dog fight in the middle of the night that prompted our neighbors to call 911. The sitter never told us of the incident, nor did she inform us that our dog's eye was seriously injured in the fight. When we returned (a week after the fight) our home reeked of feces and urine due to terrible diarrhea our dog had been having from the pain of the injury she was suffering & the sitter's further negligence that led our dogs to urinate on our carpet.
Sadly, our dog's eye was so severely infected from the injury, that had now progressed throughout the week without medical attention, that she nearly lost her eye. She has had surgery to save her eye, but she is still badly scarred and almost entirely blind in that eye.
We have pieced together all the facts of this case from the police officer's verbal and written reports, our neighbors accounts and information about the nature of the injury from our vet and opthalmologist.
To top it off, Le Pouf is claiming NO RESPONSIBILITY for the negligence of their employee. This has been an absolutely heartbreaking ordeal for us and we just want to spare anyone else from going through anything close to what we did. There are far more reputable companies to trust with your precious pets. Case By Case Pet Services, Fetch! Pet Care (for in-home care, walks, etc.) and Roscoe's Ranch (exceptional boarding facility) are a few I'd personally recommend, but I know there are many other highly professional, well operated services around–unfortunately, Le Pouf is not one of them.