Rustic Ridge Kennels

First impressions are everything and it was not a good one when I visited Rustic Ridge Kennels. My family and I were getting ready to go away for vacation and needed to find a kennel, quickly, for our new bulldog. We booked this place about a week in advance before our departure.
Driving up to the actual residence was not very welcoming as it was tucked back behind a few houses, which made it difficult to pinpoint the correct establishment. Right from the start, you can see all of the outside kennel cages for the dogs lined up in a row. The cages looked very run-​down and there was not a lot of space for the dogs to move around in.
The staff was very nice but not so warm. Didn’t really have a professional feel to them or give off a comforting feeling that we would be leaving part of our family here.
Where the dogs actually stay was probably the most disappointing part of this place. It was very old inside with a musty smell. Obviously I know it’s a dog kennel but there was no cleanliness or neatness to the place at all. The cages did not give the dogs adequate room to move around and they were only sectioned off with a wired fence, nothing to give the dogs privacy.
Our little buddy couldn’t even walk into the kennel hallway without jumping back from the cages and eventually yanking me to go back through the way we came.
The price point for this place may sound appealing, and it really is, but that’s not the only part to finding a suitable place for a dog. We were looking for a place that would keep our dog comfortable and this place did not exude that.

I will be honest upfront. I don’t think they really deserve 1 star based on their facilities and pet car. I left our dogs with them once and was pretty happy. I’ll get into my actual rating in a minute but first:
They very obviously have created numerous fake accounts to boost their ratings both on google and Unilocal.It hasn’t worked on Unilocal because they get filtered but on google they have a 5 star rating by a bunch of people who have never rated anything else. Additionally, all the reviews occur in blocks of days.
I am not going to trust the care of my pets to someone who lies just to boost ratings. If they are lying about that, who knows if they are lying to my face. It really makes me mad as I used google reviews to choose them without investigating deeper. I will not be taking my dogs back, not because of poor service, but because of complete dishonest practices. Really unfortunate.
Now, I really think they deserve between 3 and 4 stars. The facilities aren’t gorgeous but they don’t try and say they are. They took good care, or at least it seems like it, of our dogs and were very friendly. I don’t feel the facilities were overly messy or that our dogs were distressed or anything. They seemed to have enjoyed it. I do wish they would let the dogs interact, take em for walks, or let em out into a bigger area like a lot of boarding places are doing now. But, they are very low in price so that could explain that a bit. I really think they could potentially be great if they would put in a little more effort, revamp the facilities and stop with the blatant lying online.