Dog Friendly Office Project Point 14: Minimum Required Training

In the spirit of ‘Enriching the Workplace with Your Dog" at free stitch, we started the ‘Dog Friendly Office Project’ in September 2019. 

Since then, we have listened to the feedback from our customers about how their workplaces view bringing pets to work and we have created a set of guidelines for our staff who come to the office with their pets.

Through a series of blog entries, we hope to expand on and explain some of the reasoning behind the guidelines that we created in the consent form. 

In our previous blog posts, we explained some of the logic behind setting the rules written in our guidelines for bringing pets to work. In our following series of blogs, we would like to focus on some of the precautions we should take while your pet is with you in the office. 

In our last post, we reviewed the fifth point of the office guidelines; ‘be careful not to damage the building furniture and fixtures, etc. If any damage occurs, you may be required to bear the cost of repair or replacement’.

In this blog, we will examine rule 6 of the office regulations; ‘restrictions placed on pets is at the discretion of the management staff according to their level of discipline and training’.

We previously outlined that having a minimum level of training is required to bring your pet to the office. Each owner may have their own standards of what qualifies as ‘minimum level of training’, so at free stitch we elected to have an office leader decide on the standards for training and acceptance into the working area. 

To elaborate, we appoint a supervisor in charge of the Dog-friendly Office Project who routinely checks the training and discipline level of dogs entering the office, for example toilet training, obedience and noise manner. At this time, the supervisor also checks if there are any issues and how they can be overcome so that the pet can continue coming to the office. We also determine whether the pet is able to roam free throughout the office or if they need to stay inside a playpen or carry case. 

If we encounter any issues with the pet in question, we try to avoid telling our staff not to bring their pet to the office. Instead we prefer to work together with the member of staff to suggest training and ways to improve their pet’s level of discipline so they can enjoy coming to the office in the future.  

In addition to the above checks, free stitch is constantly striving to improve the quality of life for pets in the office by seeking the cooperation and understanding of its employees to keep the office clean and safe to prevent accidents or trouble. 

In the next post, we will look at point 7 of the office regulations; ‘if a large number of staff apply to bring their pets to the office on the same day, the compatibility of attending pets may be checked and you may be asked to select another day to bring your pet’. 

For more information on the dog friendly office project, please click here.

Check out the Dog-friendly Office Project on SNS