How to choose dog day care or home boarding in Birmingham

Six dog care businesses are listed for Birmingham, spread across five of the page's six areas: Gabs Dogs in Birmingham city centre & Digbeth; Fur Family Pets in Edgbaston & Harborne; Bailey's Dog Care Services and PetStay – West Midlands South in Kings Heath & Moseley; Bow's Buddies Pet & Taxi Services in Handsworth & Perry Barr; and Au'roar'a in Hall Green & Acocks Green. Selly Oak & Northfield has no listed business at the time of research.

What's actually on offer here

Every business on this page offers home boarding, day care, or both, rather than purpose-built kennels: Birmingham City Council's own register holds no boarding-kennels licences at all across the city, so a dog needing an overnight stay in Birmingham will be going into someone's home rather than a kennel block. Au'roar'a combines boarding and day care with one-to-one training and Kennel Club Good Citizen classes; Gabs Dogs is a small-dogs-only day care run on a membership basis; Bailey's Dog Care Services and PetStay – West Midlands South work as an individual home boarder and a home-boarding network matching you with a local carer; and Bow's Buddies also runs a pet-taxi collection service alongside its walking, day care and boarding.

Birmingham City Council's licence, and why Sutton Coldfield has more choice

Birmingham City Council licenses dog home boarding and day care across the whole city as a single authority, publishing its register through the animal-licensing.uk mirror. Two of the six businesses here, Fur Family Pets and Au'roar'a, are confirmed against that register, each with a licence expiry shown on the listing; the star rating the mirror shows is not published here, because it could not be read from a council-run register. The rest either self-report a licence that could not be matched to a register entry for this page, or, for PetStay – West Midlands South, operate as a franchise office whose individual carers are licensed separately by their own home council rather than through the franchise itself. It is also worth knowing that most of the council's own licensed home-boarding supply sits further out, in Sutton Coldfield and Erdington, which this page's six areas do not cover; a separate page for that area is coming, so it is worth checking there too once it is live if none of the six businesses here suit your dog.

Questions worth asking before you book

• Can I see your current Birmingham City Council licence, and what does it cover: home boarding, day care, or both?
• How many dogs, and from how many households, will be there during my dates?
• What vaccinations do you require, and how long before the stay do you need to see proof of them?
• Do you have any breed policies, including for an XL Bully with a valid exemption certificate?
• How is medication given during a stay, and what happens if my dog needs a vet while in your care?
• For a home-boarding network like PetStay, who exactly will be looking after my dog, and can I meet them first?

None of the businesses listed here publish a vaccination schedule or a stated insurance position beyond their own licence, so these are questions to put to the business directly rather than something this page can answer on its behalf. See our Birmingham prices guide for the one published price found for this page.