Day care or boarding in Folkestone, Dover and Deal?
Day care and overnight boarding are different services, and not every business listed for Folkestone, Dover and Deal offers both. Day care means your dog is looked after during the day and goes home at night; boarding, whether in a kennels or a home boarder's own house, means an overnight stay away from home.
Who offers day care
Five of the eight businesses listed offer day care: Bowesfield Kennels and Cattery near Dover (from £20 a day, alongside its boarding kennels), Harry's Home Boarding and Daycare in the Dover area, Home From Home in Folkestone (Tuesday to Friday, 8am to 5.30pm, with some Mondays by request), Spring Rise Canine Care Services in the Hawkinge and Lyminge area, and Top Dogs & Tails Day Care & Boarding, also in the Hawkinge and Lyminge area.
Who offers boarding only
Three businesses currently list home boarding without a separate day care service: Come Stay Play and Lesleys Pet Services, both in the Dover area, and Hella's Happy Hounds in Deal. That leaves the Deal area with no day care option among its current listings, and anyone in the Hythe and Romney Marsh area with no listed business of either kind yet.
Which suits your dog
| Need | Likely fit |
|---|---|
| You work daytime hours and your dog is home alone too long | Day care |
| You are away overnight, for a weekend or longer | Boarding, kennels or home |
| Your dog has never stayed away from you before | A day-care visit first, where the business offers one, before an overnight stay |
| You want the same routine and place for both day visits and overnight stays | A business offering both, such as Bowesfield, Harry's, Home From Home, Spring Rise or Top Dogs & Tails |
Home From Home is a useful example of how the two services can connect: it only accepts a dog for overnight boarding once that dog is already known to it through regular day care, so day care doubles as a trial run there. Not every business here links the two services this way, so ask directly whether a day-care visit first is possible, or required, before an overnight stay.
Price differs between the two
Where a business publishes both a day care and an overnight price, the two are rarely close: Bowesfield Kennels and Cattery charges £20 for day care against £31 for a dog's first night of boarding and £25 for each night after that. Do not assume a day rate simply divides into an overnight one, or the other way round; ask each business for its own day care and overnight figures separately.
Ask before you book
Whichever service you are after, ask what a typical day or night looks like, how much one-to-one attention your dog will get, and how the price changes for day care compared with an overnight stay, since the businesses that publish both price them quite differently.