What your dog actually does all day

Mostly, it sleeps

The photograph you get shows a dog mid-stride in a yard, and it is real, but it is one minute out of a day that runs to roughly fourteen hours between the lights going up and the lights going down. The rest of it is not exciting, and it is worth knowing what it actually looks like before the first stay, because the version most owners imagine — near-constant play — is not what a boarded dog wants any more than it is what a boarded dog gets.

The hour-by-hour

6.30am: Lights up. The overnight keeper has already been round twice; this is when the day staff arrive and the first feeds go out.

7am: Breakfast, on your dog's own schedule and your dog's own food. The lobby opens.

8am: First yard turn, by suite row, four or five dogs at a time who already know each other.

10am: Suites cleaned and bedding checked while the dogs are out. Anything damp is changed, not dried.

11.30am: Second turn, and the one-to-one walks for the dogs booked in for them.

1pm: The quiet block. Blinds down on the yard side, nobody in the corridor, and almost every dog asleep.

3pm: Third turn. The photograph most owners get is taken somewhere in this hour.

5pm: Evening feed, and medication for the dogs that have it, checked against what your vet wrote down.

6.30pm: Last turn of the day, shorter and calmer on purpose.

8pm: Lights down. The overnight keeper comes on and stays until half past six.

The two hours nobody photographs

The middle of the day is the part the website never shows, because there is nothing to show. Blinds come down on the yard side, the corridor empties, and almost every dog in the building is asleep. It runs a couple of hours, and it surprises people who picture a kennel as one long play session, but it is the same thing a dog does at home in the early afternoon. A dog that has had two yard turns and a walk by half past eleven is a tired dog by one, whether it is boarding or at home on the sofa.

The photograph is one minute, not the day

The picture most owners get is taken during the third yard turn, in the mid-afternoon, which is also usually the liveliest part of the day — the morning's nap is over and the evening feed is still a couple of hours off. It is a real photograph of the actual dog on the actual day, and it is also the one minute of the day that looks like the brochure. The other twenty-three do not, and that is not a complaint about the day, it is just what a day looks like.

Why sleep is the right amount of excitement

A dog in an unfamiliar building, with unfamiliar smells and a routine that is not its own, is working harder than it looks even while lying down. Rest is not the kennel failing to entertain an animal; it is the animal doing the sensible thing with a strange environment. A dog that comes home and sleeps for a day afterwards has usually had a perfectly ordinary stay, not a difficult one.

And somebody is there the whole time

The overnight hours are not a gap in the day just described. Once the lights go down, somebody is in the building until the day staff arrive, and that person does rounds through the night rather than sleeping through it undisturbed. It is the part of the schedule that costs the most and photographs the least, which is probably why it gets asked about the least too.