How to choose a boarding kennel, from somebody who runs one

Ask before you look at the yard

Every kennel's website shows the same three things: a bright yard, a dog mid-run, and a lobby with a bowl of treats on the desk. None of it tells you what happens at three in the morning, how many dogs are in a group when a fight starts, or what the place does when it gets something wrong. The six questions below are in the order that actually sorts a good kennel from a well-photographed one, and the first four are worth asking before you ask to see a room.

Who is in the building at night, and what do they actually do

Ask this one first, because the answer tells you more than any photograph. “Someone is on call” is not the same as somebody sleeping in the building, and an alarm company that phones a manager twenty minutes away is not the same as either. Ask specifically what happens if a dog is distressed at three in the morning: who hears it, how quickly, and what they are trained to do. A kennel that has genuinely thought about this answers in one sentence. One that has not talks about its camera system instead.

How big is a group, and where does the handler actually stand

Ask how many dogs go into a play group at once, and ask where the person watching them stands. A handler in the yard, among the dogs, can see a fight building and split it up before it starts; a handler watching through a window from the next room cannot. The number matters too: a group of thirty dogs is not being supervised, it is being contained, and containing is not the same job. There is no single right number, but a kennel that cannot tell you its own should give you pause.

What happens if my animal is unwell while I am away

Ask this before you need the answer. Who decides an animal needs a veterinarian rather than waiting it out. Which veterinarian, if yours cannot see it. Will you get a telephone call before or after the decision is made. Who pays. A kennel that has a plain answer to all four has thought about the day it goes wrong, which is the day you actually care about.

What will you not do

This is the question that tells you the most and gets asked the least. A kennel that cannot name a single thing it will not do has not thought about its own limits, and an animal is exactly the wrong place to discover them. The honest answers are usually small and specific: it will not change the dose your veterinarian wrote, it will not promise every dog a good time, it will not guarantee a live camera never drops out. A kennel willing to say what it will not do is more likely to be honest about what it does.

Ask to see the actual room, not the lobby

The lobby is decorated for you. Ask to see a suite or a run that is occupied at an ordinary hour, not staged for a tour, and ask what the floor and the bedding are like at four in the afternoon rather than nine in the morning. Ask what happens to the food you send and whether it is kept separately or mixed into a house supply. None of this is about luxury. It is about whether the place you are looking at is the place your animal will actually spend the week in.

None of this is a score

These six questions do not add up to a mark out of ten, and a kennel that answers all six well is not thereby the right one for your animal. What they do is separate an answer that has been thought about from one that has been rehearsed. Ask them of every kennel you are considering, including this one, and judge the answers rather than the yard photographs.