Travelling at Thanksgiving with a dog at home

Why this week is different

Thanksgiving week runs from 23 November 2027 to 28 November 2027 this year — the Tuesday before the holiday to the Sunday after it, worked out from the calendar rather than fixed to a date, because the fourth Thursday of November moves every year and a kennel's website should move with it. It is one of three periods in the year priced and booked differently from an ordinary week, and it is the one most owners ask about first.

The Grand Suites go first

There are only six Grand Suites in the building, against twelve Standard and ten Large, and a large dog cannot be moved into a smaller room the way a small dog sometimes can. That makes the Grand Suites the actual constraint on the week, not the building as a whole, and it is why an owner with a big dog is the one who most needs to book early rather than the owner with a small one.

The month to telephone

The Grand Suites go first and there are six of them. If you have a big dog and you travel at Thanksgiving, the useful month to telephone is September.

What a minimum stay is actually for

A stay that begins inside the Thanksgiving window has a minimum length of three nights, and it is worth knowing why rather than treating it as a fee. A single night's turnover, where a suite is cleaned and re-let the same day, uses up a handler's time on the busiest days of the year for the least revenue and the least certainty. A minimum length on the busiest nights means fewer suites are lost to same-day turnarounds and more families travelling that week actually get a bed for their dog. A stay that starts before the window and simply runs into it is not affected; the minimum only applies to a stay that begins inside the window itself.

The uplift and the deposit

The nightly rate carries a 25% uplift across the window, and a stay that starts inside it holds one night as a deposit rather than nothing down, which is the case for every ordinary week of the year. Free cancellation moves from two days' notice to a full week's for exactly the same reason as the minimum stay: a cancellation on short notice in an ordinary week is easy to re-let, and a cancellation on short notice in Thanksgiving week usually is not.

What it actually costs, for two dogs from one household

None of the arithmetic above is meant to be worked out by hand. Here is a real example, computed the same way the pricing page computes it: two dogs from one household, in adjoining Large Suites for the whole of Thanksgiving week.

Book it as two bookings, not one

Two dogs from one household get adjoining suites rather than one shared suite, which is true every week of the year and not only this one — nothing here shares a suite with anything else, whatever the season. In practice that means Thanksgiving week is booked as two separate bookings against one household, and the second dog is charged at the household rate rather than the full one, which the example above already reflects.