How to choose dog boarding or day care in Doncaster

Nine dog boarders, day cares and kennels are listed for Doncaster, all licensed by a single authority, City of Doncaster Council, since the whole borough sits inside one unitary council rather than being split between two or three the way some towns are. Three are home boarders, licensed to operate from their own house, and all three also hold a day-care licence; six run boarding kennels from a trading address, and three of those six — AD ASTRA Kennels and Cattery, Longmeadow Pet Hotel and Chaiquinta Pet Hotel & Grooming Salon — are also licensed for day care alongside their kennels. What matters most when choosing depends on which type of stay your dog needs.

Home boarding, day care or kennels

Doncaster’s three home boarders are Hannah’s Happy Hounds, a town-wide network of separately licensed carers founded by Hannah Martin in 2019; Paws 4 A Break, run by Jane and Martyn in the Mexborough area; and Jake’s Adventures Pet Care, based in the Doncaster area, though at the time of research it was not taking new home boarding or day-care bookings and offering dog walking only. A home boarder takes your dog into their own home rather than a purpose-built kennel block, and the address is given once you book rather than published here. The remaining six businesses run from a trading address: Oakwood Boarding Kennels & Cattery in Toll Bar, Mayflower Boarding Kennels and Cattery in Bawtry, Bryce Boarding Kennels in the Bawtry & Tickhill area, AD ASTRA Kennels and Cattery and Longmeadow Pet Hotel in Thorne, and Chaiquinta Pet Hotel & Grooming Salon near Barnby Dun. Of these, AD ASTRA, Longmeadow and Chaiquinta also hold a day-care licence alongside boarding kennels, and each of Doncaster’s three home boarders is licensed for day care too.

Where they are, and where they are not

Thorne & Hatfield has three listed businesses and Bentley & Scawthorpe and Bawtry & Tickhill two each. Doncaster centre and Mexborough & Conisbrough are thin, with one listing each, and two areas, Bessacarr & Cantley and Armthorpe & Edenthorpe, have no listed business at all: the council's register names no boarder or day care with a confirmed phone number in either, so none is shown there rather than guessed from a neighbouring postcode. If your area shows none, it is worth asking City of Doncaster Council directly for its current list of licensed boarders, since a genuinely local operator can take time to appear in research like this.

The council licence

Every business listed holds a current licence from City of Doncaster Council, the single authority covering the whole town: a licence is a legal requirement in England for boarding kennels, home boarding and day care alike, not something a business can choose to skip. The council runs its own online register rather than using a national aggregator, and each entry gives a licence number, an expiry date and, where the council has assessed one, a star rating from 1 to 5. Every business here carries a star rating on the register, from Chaiquinta’s 2 stars up to 5 stars, the rating held by each of the three home boarders. A star rating is the council’s own inspection score, tied to how often the licence is reinspected, and is not a customer review, so read it the way you would a food hygiene rating rather than a Google star. Ask to see the current licence certificate and check the number against the register yourself, and ask what the maximum number of dogs the licence covers is, since it can be lower than what the site could otherwise hold.

Questions worth asking

None of the following are things this directory can answer for you; they are worth putting to the business directly before you book.

• 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 is medication given during a stay, and is there an extra charge for it?
• How many other dogs, and from how many other households, will be there during my dates?

None of the Doncaster businesses listed here publish a vaccination schedule, a stated breed policy or an insurance position beyond their council licence, so these are all questions to ask directly rather than assume an answer either way. See our Doncaster prices guide for what one business publishes and what everyone else is likely to quote once they know your dates.