What we will not claim
What a temperament assessment cannot tell you
What you will see advertised
“Our proprietary behavioural assessment guarantees a safe play group, every time.”
What is actually true
The assessment is three quarters of an hour, on one morning, in a building your animal has never been in, with people it has never met. It is genuinely useful and it is that small.
It tells us how to start: which group, how big, how fast, and whether to start at all. That is worth a great deal and it is why we do not skip it for anybody.
It does not predict next year. Dogs change — after an illness, after a house move, after something happened in a park that you may never know about. A dog that was easy in groups at two can be done with groups at six, and the way you find that out is by watching every day, not by reading a report from four years ago.
And it cannot make a group safe. Nothing makes a group of animals safe. A handler in the yard, small groups, matched sizes and the willingness to pull a dog out the moment it stops enjoying itself make it *safer*, which is the only word available.
What we do instead
We re-read every dog continuously and we will telephone you the day something changes, rather than at the end of the stay.
The other nine
One argument in ten parts. Each is a sentence you might see advertised, and a plainer thing that is true at this lodge instead.
Are those dates free?
The calendar shows every night, for every suite class, with how many are left and what that night costs. Nothing is paid on this website: you pay when you collect.