How to choose dog boarding or day care in Crawley

Eleven dog boarders, kennels and day cares are listed for Crawley, spread across two council areas: Crawley Borough Council licenses Crawley town centre & Three Bridges and Ifield & Bewbush, while Mid Sussex District Council licenses East Grinstead, Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill. Six of the eleven are home boarders, four run day care or boarding from a dedicated site, and one, Bulldog Holidays, is a specialist boarding kennels. What matters most when choosing depends on which of these you need.

Home boarding, day care or kennels

Six businesses board dogs in the boarder's own home rather than a kennel or day-care building: Sit and Stay Sussex in Crawley town centre & Three Bridges, which says it cannot take on any more dogs for the foreseeable future; Vanity Fur West Hoathly in East Grinstead; Bonnie's House, We Love Pets Haywards Heath and Peppa's Pooch Playhouse (which also covers Burgess Hill) in Haywards Heath; and Go Barking in Burgess Hill. As with any home boarder, only the area and town are shown on the listing, not a street address; ask how many other dogs will be in the house during your dates, and whether they are all from one family or several. The Doghouse and Happy Dayz Dogs run day care from a dedicated site rather than a home, and Cherry Tree Kennels & Cattery and The Dogfather do the same, each from their own kennels or fenced site. Bulldog Holidays, in Ifield & Bewbush, is the only business here holding itself out as boarding kennels rather than day care or home boarding, and specialises in bulldogs.

Ifield & Bewbush is thin

Ifield & Bewbush has only one listed business, Bulldog Holidays, a specialist bulldog kennels; no day care or home boarding business with a confirmed phone number was found in this area during research. If you are in Ifield or Bewbush and need day care or general home boarding rather than a bulldog specialist, the nearest listed choices are in Crawley town centre & Three Bridges or further out in Haywards Heath.

What the council licence tells you here

Both councils' registers were checked for this page only through animal-licensing.uk, a third-party mirror of the councils' own registers, not the councils' own published pages, so no star rating is shown on any Crawley listing here even where the mirror itself carries one — treat any star rating you see quoted elsewhere with some caution and ask to see the current certificate. Seven of the eleven businesses have a current licence confirmed on the mirror: Cherry Tree Kennels & Cattery, Happy Dayz Dogs, We Love Pets Haywards Heath, The Dogfather, Go Barking and Peppa's Pooch Playhouse, plus The Doghouse, whose register entry had already passed its stated expiry date at the time of checking, so no licence panel is shown for it on this site — ask to see a current certificate before booking. Three further businesses, Sit and Stay Sussex, Vanity Fur West Hoathly and Bonnie's House, are not shown as licensed on the register mirror checked here (Bonnie's House quotes a licence number on its own site, but a business's own website is not itself a public register entry), and Bulldog Holidays quotes a licence number that could not be matched to Crawley Borough Council's own mirror. None of this means these four are unlicensed, only that this research pass could not confirm it independently; ask any business directly for its licence number and check it yourself on the relevant council's register.

Questions to ask

• 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 households?
• What happens if my dog needs a vet while it is in your care?

None of the businesses listed here publish a vaccination schedule or a stated insurance position beyond what appears on their own site or licence, so these are questions to put directly to the business, not answers this directory can give on its behalf.

Prices

Five of the eleven businesses listed publish a price; see our Crawley prices guide for the published figures and what they cover. Whichever type of boarding or day care you choose, ask what a second dog from the same household costs, whether bank holidays are charged at a higher rate, and whether collection outside normal hours is included or priced separately.