New facility in Windsor rehabs dogs with behavioral issues

Colleen Combs grew up in a Navy family and was never allowed to
have pets. She was so interested in animals that she would ask to
help care for her neighbors’ pets everywhere her family moved.
When Combs finally stepped out on her own to join the work
force, she still had the desire to be surrounded by dogs. With a
little inspiration from her adopted dachshund, King, she decided to
quit her job and open a dog-care facility, King’s Kastle.
“We are outgrowing our Cloverdale location and the demand for
the service that we do is just growing exponentially,” owner
Colleen Combs said of opening her second location in Windsor on
August 1.
King’s Kastle works with dogs from all over the Bay Area, taking
in clients for grooming, dog daycare, and non-kennel boarding along
with more serious services including rehabilitation, socialization
and adoption, The company houses anywhere from 70 to 90 dogs
daily.
“It is not really a business we can franchise, it is a very
personal one-on-one training skill to do this controlled and
methodically for each dog’s individual needs,” Combs said.
It takes Combs a year to train an employee to work at King’s
Kastle due to several services the company offers. Behavior issues
and socialization with other dogs and people are just a few of the
skills people hope their dogs will learn from Combs and her
staff.
“What I discovered is that there is a gift involved,” said
Combs. “I still had to get to know a variety of behaviors and
styles of dogs, breeds and tendencies but I also just seemed to
have a connection.”
In her college years, Combs studied behavioral sciences and
worked toward understanding communication styles in humans and
later animals.
“It began to make sense to me that we have a lot of energy in
our expressive language and that is the language of a dog,” said
Combs. “So we are bridging the gap to bring the two communities
(people and dogs) back together.”
Part of the process of accepting a dog into King’s Kastle is to
go out to the owner and dog’s home and assess what issues both
parties are having.
Other times the company takes in dogs from the Healdsburg Animal
Shelter and other county shelters that need rehabilitation. Once
the dogs have worked with Combs’ personal pack of dogs, twelve to
be exact, the dog moves into the general population and is ready
for adoption.
Three months ago, Brenda Aegan of Healdsburg adopted Frankie, a
terrier mix, from the Healdsburg Animal Shelter but was having
trouble with his behavior toward her husband. The problem quickly
escalated so she enrolled him at King’s Kastle Windsor.
“Colleen is helping get him in shape, it was that or I was
heading toward divorce court,” Aegan joked about her new dog
harassing her husband.
Frankie, like most dogs that enter into county shelters don’t
come with a history and it is hard to understand what their
behavioral issues stem from. King’s Kastle specializes in finding
those issues and helping to correct them.
“In our new Windsor location we don’t offer grooming because we
already have a service across the street but we do offer non-kennel
boarding, socialization for anxiety whether it be separation from
owner or other dogs, little dog complex, and teaching dogs to
operate in a pack-like environment,” Combs said.
Both locations operate seven days a week, twenty-four hours a
day, 365 days a year and always have an employee with the dogs. For
more information on King’s Kastle services and rates, go to their
web site at www.kingskastlellc.com.