How to choose dog boarding or day care in Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket

Twenty-seven dog boarders, day cares and kennels are listed across Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket's eight areas: seven in Mildenhall & Lakenheath, six in Bury St Edmunds, four in Stowmarket, four in Diss & Eye, two in Sudbury, two in Thetford & Brandon, and one each in Newmarket and Haverhill. Eight are home boarders, fourteen hold a boarding kennels licence type, ten hold a day care licence type and one is a home-boarding arranger that matches dogs with a network of carers rather than boarding at one address itself; several businesses hold more than one licence type. What matters most when choosing depends on which of the three you need.

Home boarding, day care or kennels

Eight businesses board dogs in the boarder's own home rather than a kennel block: The Dog Hotel Whepstead, We Love Pets Bury St Edmunds and Holidays4Dogs - Cambridge and Suffolk (all in the Bury St Edmunds area), Moulton Pet Sitters in the Newmarket area, The Dog House Daycare in the Sudbury area, Doggie Sweetdreamz in the Stowmarket area, Phoenix House Home Boarding in the Diss & Eye area, and KCO Pets in the Mildenhall & Lakenheath area. As home boarders, all eight are shown here by area and town only; the exact address is given once you book. Camp Tails Doggy Daycare, East Anglian Dog Training and Grooming, Doggie Daydreamz, Mischief Doggy Day Care Centre and The House of Muddy Paws run day care from a dedicated site rather than a home. The remaining businesses run boarding kennels: Ixworth Country Kennels, Hanchett Hall, Waterhall, Acorn, Boundary, Goldbrook, Quiet Acres, Wortham, Church Farm, Lindcoly, Pine Farm, Winterbrooke and Forest Animal Boarding, several of which also take cats alongside dogs.

Newmarket and Haverhill are thin

Newmarket and Haverhill each have only one listed business with a confirmed phone number: Moulton Pet Sitters and Hanchett Hall Boarding Kennels & Cattery. This is not because fewer businesses operate there: West Suffolk Council's own register, which covers both towns, gives no address field at all on any of its kennels, home boarding or day care pages, so most of its entries could not be confidently placed in Newmarket or Haverhill specifically rather than somewhere else in the district. If you are in either town, it is worth calling West Suffolk Council directly for its current list of licensed boarders in your postcode, since a business can be licensed without appearing here by name.

Five councils, two different licence pictures

Every business here needs a licence to operate: it is a legal requirement in England, not something a business can opt out of. Five councils cover this area's districts, and they do not all publish the same thing. West Suffolk Council (17 of the 27 listed businesses) and Mid Suffolk District Council (7) both publish their own web-table registers giving a licence number, a 1-to-5 star rating and an expiry date, and those figures appear on the listing here, sourced from West Suffolk Council's own register and Mid Suffolk District Council's own register. Breckland Council (2 businesses: Winterbrooke Boarding and Day Kennels and Pooch's Yard - Doggy Day Care) and South Norfolk Council (1: Phoenix House Home Boarding) publish no register online at all, so those three listings carry no licence number, no star and no expiry date here — only a note that the business itself states it holds a council licence, which has not been independently checked. A fourth business, Forest Animal Boarding, sits in an area licensed by West Suffolk Council but was not found on that council's own kennels register, so it is shown the same way, with no licence figures. Ask any of these four directly for their current licence number and to see the certificate.

Questions worth asking

• Can I see your current council licence certificate and its star rating, if it has one?
• 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?
• How many other dogs, and from how many households, will be there during my dates?
• How is medication given during a stay, and is there an extra charge for it?
• What happens if my dog needs a vet while it is in your care?

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. See our Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket prices guide for what eight of these twenty-seven businesses publish.