How to choose dog boarding or day care in Brighton

Seventeen dog day care, home boarding and boarding-kennel businesses are listed for Brighton, spread across three different licensing councils: Brighton & Hove City Council in the city itself, Adur District Council around Southwick and Shoreham-by-Sea, and Lewes District Council around Peacehaven, Telscombe Cliffs and Saltdean. Fifteen of the seventeen are home boarders, taking your dog into their own house rather than a kennel block; the other two, Benwick Kennels & Cattery near Peacehaven and Little Bones in Southwick, run from a dedicated premises.

Home boarding, day care or kennels

Fifteen businesses here board dogs in the boarder's own home: in Brighton city centre, Barker's Dogs, Brighton Barkers, Dog Star, Nordic Paws, Paws at Home and Snobby Doggy; in Hove, Beach Barkers Pet Services, Pix's Paradise and Positive Paws at Zoe's; in Woodingdean and Rottingdean, FURB&B (FurBee Dog Holidays) and Wendy's Walk & Board; in Patcham, Waggy Days; in Portslade and Southwick, Sticks and Tricks; and around Saltdean and Peacehaven, Mystery Paws and Waves & Waggy Tails. A home boarder usually takes far fewer dogs at a time than a kennel — Waves & Waggy Tails, for example, boards a maximum of four — so ask how many other dogs will be in the house during your dates, and whether they are all from one family or several. Benwick Kennels & Cattery, near Peacehaven, runs purpose-built boarding kennels and a cattery on around five acres rather than a home, and Little Bones, in Southwick, runs day care only, for small dogs, from a dedicated garden rather than overnight stays.

Two areas with no listing yet

Lewes town itself and Shoreham-by-Sea have no business listed here. For Lewes, this traces to Lewes District Council's own register being unreadable online at the time of research, rather than a confirmed absence of licensed operators in the town; the three Lewes District Council businesses that were found — Mystery Paws, Benwick Kennels & Cattery and Waves & Waggy Tails — are all based on the Peacehaven and Saltdean side of the council area instead. For Shoreham-by-Sea, a check of a home-boarding directory found only businesses based elsewhere in West Sussex serving the town, not one based in it, alongside Adur District Council's own register portal being unreadable online — so this reads as more likely a genuine gap than a research artefact, though it has not been confirmed with a manual visit to the council's own register.

What the council licence shows here

All three councils require a licence for dog boarding, home boarding and day care, but how much the online register shows varies a great deal between them. Brighton & Hove City Council's own register lists a name and a star rating from 1 to 5 for each entry under a single "Dog Boarding" category, but gives no address, licence number or expiry date for any of them. Twelve of these businesses fall under that council; eleven of the twelve are confirmed on the register — Barker's Dogs, Beach Barkers Pet Services, Brighton Barkers, Dog Star, FURB&B, Nordic Paws, Paws at Home, Pix's Paradise, Positive Paws at Zoe's, Snobby Doggy and Wendy's Walk & Board — while Waggy Days does not appear under this name on the register, so its licensing could not be confirmed either way. Three of the eleven — Nordic Paws, Pix's Paradise and Positive Paws at Zoe's — also publish their own licence number on their own site, which the council's register itself does not show. Adur District Council's and Lewes District Council's own online registers could not be read at all during research (one returns an empty search form, the other a bot-check page), so none of the five businesses under those two councils — Sticks and Tricks, Little Bones, Mystery Paws, Benwick Kennels & Cattery and Waves & Waggy Tails — has a confirmed register entry here. Little Bones, Benwick Kennels & Cattery and Waves & Waggy Tails each have a licence number attached to them, from their own site or from directory listings; treat this as a starting point for your own check rather than as confirmed by us, and ask to see the current licence and its expiry date when you call. Where a star rating is shown, it is the council's own inspection score, similar to a food hygiene rating, and not a customer review.

Questions worth asking

None of these are things this directory can answer on a business's behalf; they are worth putting to the business directly before you book.

• Can I see your current licence and its expiry date?
• What vaccinations do you require, and how long before the stay do you need to see proof of them?
• Do you have a policy on kennel cough, and what is it?
• Do you have any breed restrictions or conditions, including for an XL Bully with a valid exemption certificate?
• Are you insured, and can you show evidence of current cover?
• How many other dogs will be there during my dates, and from how many different households?
• How is medication given during a stay, and is there an extra charge for it?

For a home boarder, the street address is given once you book rather than published here; ask for it, along with directions and parking, when you confirm your dates.

Prices

Only one of the seventeen businesses listed, Little Bones, publishes a price; see our Brighton prices guide for that figure and what to ask everyone else.