A popular luxury dog hotel in San Francisco, where rooms can cost upward of $150 a night, is now the subject of scrutiny following a string of viral TikTok videos accusing the hotel of neglecting dogs in its care.
The San Francisco location of Wag Hotels, a dog boarding chain not connected to the dog-walking startup of the same name, has been accused in at least two viral videos on the social media platform of neglecting to take care of pets — sparking fury online. Wag Hotels has locked its Twitter account (after briefly deactivating the account) and limited comments on its Instagram account following the blowback. Yelp has also limited reviews for the hotel.
A TikTok user named Michelle — who runs a popular account with content about her dog Miso — was the first person to publicly criticize the San Francisco location last week. (She declined to be interviewed by SFGATE.)
In a video, she explained the litany of issues her dog allegedly experienced during his stay on Aug. 5 through 7. She was allegedly refused access to a camera to monitor Miso’s room remotely until the second day of his stay (an amenity she says she paid extra for), and a camera inside a playroom seemingly showed that her dog’s paws were visibly dirty.
“When I picked him up, he was covered in urine all over his body, all over his paws, all up to his elbows and he was in a very, very poor mental state,” Michelle said in the video.
She alleged in a Yelp review posted on the company’s page — which included photos of Miso’s paws — that her dog was subject to poor accommodations during his stay.
“It is my opinion that Miso was not put in the proper accommodations — and that’s not only why the staff refused to share a video link but also why he came home in such poor condition,” she wrote in her review.
Wag Hotels chief operating officer Michael Griggs acknowledged that “there were a few issues with Miso’s recent stay,” but denied that Miso was subject to poor accommodations or mistreatment.
“He enjoyed three solid days of supervised play, slept in a private deluxe suite on a memory foam raised bed, had a large appetite, and became a staff favorite,” Griggs said in a statement to SFGATE. Griggs also explained that the delay in the private room camera was due to the camera “malfunctioning.”
A photo Michelle posted on Yelp of Miso’s paws.
Michelle N./YelpBut that video has received more than 2 million views as of Monday afternoon — and more customers stepped forward in the comments of Michelle’s video with claims of their dogs being mistreated while staying at Wag Hotels. Another aggrieved Wag Hotels customer, Cilla Chan, alleged in a separate TikTok video posted Aug. 9 that the hotel did not feed her dog Cobie until hours after her usual feeding time. She alleged that she heard her dog crying out on camera to be fed.
“The play groups are so oversubscribed, they’re so crowded, that it’s almost … like those fishes that are in fish tanks where they can barely swim by each other,” she said in the video. (Chan also declined to be interviewed.)
“Wag Hotels is committed to delivering top-of-the-line care and service to all guests, and what happened during Miso’s stay did not measure up to our standards,” Griggs wrote to SFGATE.
Wag has nine locations in California, including four across the Bay Area.
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