About - Heartland Pet Resort

About Heartland Pet Resort

Our Mission Statement:

Our mission is to elevate pet boarding by providing a safe and loving home away from home. Here every pet is treated like family through exceptional and compassionate care in clean and secure facilities. We offer personalized attention, enriching experiences, and a calm, comfortable environment. This supports each pet’s health, well-being, and happiness, ensuring owners have complete peace of mind and confidence in our expert hands.

Our Resort:

Heartland Pet Resort offers a unique experience you will not find anywhere else. A quiet country setting on nearly 13 acres is a doggie paradise with countless leisure activities for your pet during their stay. Not only do we have plenty of space to play outside, we have 1,800 square feet of climate controlled indoor play area with slip resistant rubber flooring. We are the only pet resort in NW Iowa that also has a professional full-service grooming salon and training academy on site.

Our Owners:

Miranda and Eric Shannon live on site with their three children Sean (13 yrs), twins Brayden and Laura (11 yrs), their fur children dogs Yukon, Spike, Kenai and Duncan and their cats Butterscoth and Snickers. As well as the menagerie of other pets such as salt water fish, koi pond, ducks, chickens, bunny & a hedgehog. Having the owners on-site provides added peace of mind when leaving your pet on vacation. Heartland Pet Resort has been in the business of spoiling pets since 1994. Miranda and Eric have been the owners since 2017. However, Miranda grew up in NW Iowa and started working at Heartland Kennels in 2004. After graduating high school in 2007 Miranda went on to earn a degree in Animal Science Pre-Vet Med from Iowa State University in 3 “short” years in 2010. This is where she met her husband Eric as he got his degree in Mechanical Engineering. Throughout the years no matter which direction her life has gone, Miranda always loved working for Heartland Kennels as the manager. For over 13 years she enjoyed spoiling your pets, watching them grow up, cried when they had to cross that rainbow bridge and rejoice when a new member joined the family. So when it came time for the previous owners to retire Miranda was able to fulfill a lifelong dream to continue giving your pet’s the best home away from home at Heartland Pet Resort as the new owner. Miranda had a vision and Eric was happy to jump in and help. They started making some exciting changes including but not limited to some wonderful upgrades to the facilities to help make both your experience as a customer more enjoyable and that of your pets’ as well. They have expanded the training academy programs and added a retail boutique and office. While Miranda and Eric love everyone of our guests and they strive to spend as much time with everyone as possible. They realize it takes a great team to give the kind of care and experience that they are dedicated to providing for our guests. This means we have a large staff of animal lovers that look forward to spoiling your dogs and cats with personal attention while striving to consistently provide our guests with the highest quality of care possible. We are dedicated to providing the ultimate in comfort, health and safety for each of our guests and we strive to make every guests’ experience as enjoyable as possible.

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Our Staff

Grace Lamoreux

Resort Manager

I have 3 rescue pups named Shayla (5), Phoenix (3), and Maevis (1). What started as just a fun summer job 4 years ago after college became a full on passion for animal safety and care. So I decided to jump all-in when an assistant manager position opened up here at Heartland. Then moved into the manager position. I love getting to learn more about this industry and will take any opportunity to expand my knowledge. As a result I have earned the following certifications.

Infectious Disease Management

Safe Group Play Enrichment

Canine Body Language and Behavior

As one of the resort managers I typically work the evening shifts where I oversee daily operations and work to ensure the facility stays clean and maintained for each visitor we see. Each evening I enjoy getting to ensure all your 4-legged family members are tucked in for bed. I do have the pleasure of working the Wednesday daycare shift where I get to be in the middle of it all coming up with fun games for the dogs to play and controlling the organized chaos that comes with a day of enrichment at our facility. I love getting to know and create a bond with all of the visitors we get to take care of and appreciate all of our customers for their trust in letting us care for their pets as if they are our own.

Kara Burd

Resort Manager

I have two rescue heelers, one red named Bentley (6 years) and one blue named Hank (5 years). I have always had a passion for dogs. I adopted my first rescue in high school and taught him all of the basics which started my interest in training. When I got Bentley as a puppy I enjoyed teaching him many tricks & training him to be a good boy. As of 2025 Hank is a certified Canine Good Citizen. As the weekday day manager here you will usually see me behind the desk overseeing daily operations to make sure we are running smoothly, answering phone calls and ensuring all our guests are up to date on vaccination so we can provide a safe facility for all our staff and customers. I also help teach our Wednesday night basic obedience classes, as well as, any dogs that do one on one lessons and board and train at our facility. I love getting to see the progress that is made week by week with the training dogs and building relationships with our customers and their furry family members.

I proudly have the following certifications:

Infectious Disease Management

Canine Body Language & Behavior

Safe Group Play & Enrichment

Tabitha Sarvie

Groomer

Bio coming Soon!

Skyla Sarvie

Bather

Bio coming Soon!

Alyssa Wittich

Part-Time Weekend Manager

Bio coming Soon!

Hailey Huckfelt-Dirks

Trainer

I am one of the trainers here at Heartland. I have been in this field for about 7 years and I teach our training classes on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, along with Kara and Miranda. I started training because I was working at a local shelter and wanted to be able to help the dogs become more adoptable, so I started training with Heartland to become a trainer. My first adoption of a dog in my adult life was a reservation dog that was slotted for euthanasia because she was cat and dog aggressive. I had two cats at the time, but knew she deserved another chance so, I worked with her and after A LOT of training and behaivor modification she now lives in a mullti-animal household with a child. Since starting to train here at Heartland I have been to multiple hands-on conferences for behavioral and shelter dog training. I enjoy training and love getting to see the progress and betterment of dogs behaviors not only throughout class but in all walks of life. Training isn’t an overnight fix. It takes lots of time and energy which is why the end results are so gratifying to see.

Paige Rutter

Resort Attendant

I started working here 5 years ago in 2021 because I love working with animals and thought this would be a fun after school job. I have a Boston Terrier named Hank, and also have a chicken coop with my grandpa. I am currently enrolled in classes to receive my associates degree, and in August plan to go to Iowa State to further my education and get a degree in Animal Science. Following that, I am hoping to continue forward and become a large animal veterinarian.