Dog Boarding - Herts - short notice :-(

[ShredMeJillianIWantToBeNatalie]

We are booked to go on holiday 22nd July for a week and my MIL who always has our dog has been booked in for hospital investigations at short notice. I’ve rung round a few boarding kennels I know of but they are (understandably) fully booked. Any ideas?

Try Barking mad OP they helped us at short notice and were brilliant.

Thanks geekone I’ve messaged them.

I've heard bad things of barking mad (dont meet the sitter etc). Try Tailster or DogBuddy. 100% fully insured and you meet the person before hand, see their home and reviews/ pics of past clients.

Avoid Barking Mad if you can
You won’t know where your dog has actually gone

OP; we’ve just used Homefromhome. They were great. Try calling them as I think they’d have home carers in your area....

You HAVE to do a home visit first before approving the match (and no obligation to accept).

I use pawfect friends home boarding if you are east herts way

Not sure if they are fully booked for summer as are very popular but worth a try

Barking Mad are just a front for unlicensed boarding. It's a franchise business who pay peanuts to the boarding family (£5) per night.

You have no idea who your dog is going to, what their house is like, if they have other dogs or even a garden. I'd avoid like the plague.

Have you rung round your local vets to ask if they can recommend a pet sitter instead? (person stays with your dog in your home)

A lot of Dog Walking businesses also offer this type of service.

With Barking Mad it depends who runs the franchise as to what service you get and how much the boarder gets. The ones here are brilliant. I saw the bio of where my dog went and learned all about the lady taking him. In the end it didn’t work he is a puppy and was too much of a pest for her dog so the franchise owners took him in he has actually come back a calmer dog and they gave him a new toy. It’s like everything there are bad kennels and there will be the same barking mad franchise but most of the problems are rumours from people who have not used barking mad.
We could not have been happier with the service.

They take your dog from your house and drop them off with someone yiu have never met and who hasn’t met your dog
That is a fact not a rumour
The people the dog goes to might be lovely but I can’t get my head around my dog going to stay with somwme I’ve never met

We’re in St Albans. Had a chat with the vet this morning and he recommended a couple of home sitters. We didn’t hear back from Barking Mad! Fingers crossed we find somewhere....this is worse than looking for a nursery place 😃

Hi all just wanted to update this thread, really just in case anyone searches and could be helped by our experience.

We found a sitter through Dog Buddy who seemed nice, we took our dog to her home to meet her dog and they got on really well. All seemed good, she confirmed the booking and we paid in full. Four days later - three days before our holiday - she phoned and said she’d got a longer term booking and was cancelling ours!

Obviously we weren’t happy but ultimately if someone is going to behave like that the last thing you want is them looking after your dog so the only option is to accept the refund and start afresh. So we started ringing round kennels etc again.

We managed to get a place in a kennels that I know and that we were very happy with for five of the seven days we were away but they just couldn’t do the last two days. By a stroke of luck one of the other sitters we had contacted through Dog Buddy was prepared to pick our dog up from kennels and do the last two days. We went to meet her and to be honest she had a much more professional set up than the first sitter and was much more prepared to discuss questions such as what if he was sick, how would she walk the dogs if the weather continued to be hot, etc.

All went to plan and I have to say we were very happy with the communication from the second sitter. And her ability to pick up our dog from kennels (in a vehicle clearly designed to transport pets!) was a huge bonus.

So I think I would cautiously endorse Dog Buddy but as with all of these services it really does depend on the individual sitter.

www.borrowmydoggy.com/ - our local branch has lovely people. I applied myself and now offer one-on-one day care and occasionally weekends or longer by mutual agreement. I've always met the owners and got to know the dogs first. I volunteered about a year after losing my own beloved pet and have had no problems at all, have got to know lots of new people, made some new friends and, best of all, had the privilege of looking after and enjoying the company of some wonderful little furries. Not sure if they have a branch where you are but worth checking. Hope you get sorted.

Hugely unprofessional to take a later, longer booking and dump the client who had already booked you (I'm a freelance temp sec and this is something I never have done to any client though I have had the situation arise and have had to forego the better paid job). Interested to read that some people use agencies who don't introduce them to sitter and who just waft their dog off to the sitter from home. I used to home-board my old dog with two different agencies - the first one was best but went out of biz. I was insistent that I must meet the home-boarder, with my dog, and see their home before the holiday date and this was normal practice with the agency. I wanted to know dog and carer would be ok together and I didn't want to just take my dog to a stranger in a strange suburb and hand her over - she would definitely (an old rescue) have thought I was abandoning her forever. Later, I decided I did not want the dog boarded outside our area, so that, if they lost her, at least she'd find her way home, plus it was less stressful for her to be in an area she knew (she was an old lady by then). Luckily I now live in a hugely doggy area and there are several nice people who do home boarding nearby.