How to choose dog boarding or day care in Swindon

Twenty-nine dog boarders, day cares and kennels are listed for Swindon, spanning Swindon Borough Council's own licensing area and the fringes of Wiltshire Council's area around Royal Wootton Bassett, Marlborough and Highworth. Twenty are home boarders, licensed to keep dogs in their own home rather than a kennel block; the other nine run from a fixed site. Four businesses hold a day-care licence — Scruffs Doggy Day Care and Pooch'n'Pals alongside a home-boarding licence, Red Lodge Canine Country Club alongside a boarding kennels licence, and Doggy Day Care & Grooming Swindon on a day-care licence on its own. What matters most when choosing depends on which of these you need.

Home boarding, day care or kennels

Eight of the twenty home boarders — Cary's Canines, Chaz and Chums, Courtney's Pet Care Service, It's A Dogs Life, Wessex Dog Boarding, Four Paws Dog Boarding and Swindon Happy Paws, plus the boarding kennels Rocco's Retreat — are recorded under a Swindon town-centre fallback area, because Swindon Borough Council's own register pages never publish a street address or even a suburb for a home boarder, and no other source gave one either; these are genuine, phone-verified, licensed businesses, just not confidently placeable in one of the town's other seven named areas. The remaining thirteen home boarders are spread across Old Town (Scruffs Doggy Day Care, Charlie's Pet Care, Happy Home for Hounds), Stratton (Badbury Pet Adventures, TLC Pet Sitting), Haydon Wick (A Helping Paw, Bark'N Stay, We Love Pets Swindon, Pooch'n'Pals), West Swindon (Lydiard Paws, Betts Pets), Royal Wootton Bassett & Wroughton (Nythe Farm Home Boarding) and Highworth, Cricklade & Shrivenham (Highworth Pet Care). A home boarder usually takes far fewer dogs at a time than a kennels, so ask how many other dogs will be in the house during your dates, and whether they are all from one family or several. Doggy Day Care & Grooming Swindon runs day care from premises on Moredon Road in Haydon Wick rather than boarding overnight. The remaining kennels — Braydon Dogs (West Swindon), Flaxlands Kennels & Cattery, Goldborough House Kennels & Cattery and Red Lodge Canine Country Club (Royal Wootton Bassett), Dukesmead Boarding Kennels & Cattery (Marlborough & Ramsbury), and Droveway Kennels and Chogs (Highworth, Cricklade & Shrivenham) — run from a fixed site and generally take more dogs at once than a home boarder would.

Marlborough & Ramsbury: only one confirmed business

Marlborough & Ramsbury is the thinnest of Swindon's eight areas: only one business, Dukesmead Boarding Kennels & Cattery at Ogbourne St George, was confirmed with a phone number here at the time of research. A second business was found on Wiltshire Council's register for this area but excluded because no phone number could be confirmed for it after searching. If you are looking in this area, it is worth calling Wiltshire Council directly and asking for its current list of licensed boarders, since a small or new operator can take time to appear in research like this.

The council licence in this area

Every business listed for Swindon holds a licence from either Swindon Borough Council or Wiltshire Council: a legal requirement in England for dog boarding, home boarding and day care alike, not something a business chooses to display. Swindon Borough Council runs its own public directory, browsable by category, giving a licence number, a star rating out of five where one has been awarded, and how many dogs or animals the licence covers, though never a street address for a home boarder. Wiltshire Council's licences, for the villages around Royal Wootton Bassett, Marlborough and Highworth, were checked through animal-licensing.uk, a third-party mirror of the council's own register, which gave a postcode and licence type but no star rating or licence number for that authority. One business, Betts Pets, describes itself as council-licensed on its own site, but its licence could not be matched to a specific entry on either council's published register, so no licence details are shown on its listing. A licence recorded during research can also lapse before you call: Badbury Pet Adventures's licence was recorded with an expiry date that has since passed, so its listing here no longer carries the licence panel, and this is a reminder to ask any business for a current licence rather than rely on a date found in research. Where a star rating is shown, it is the council's own inspection score, tied to how often the licence is reinspected, and is worth reading the way you would a food hygiene rating rather than 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.

• 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?
• Can I see your current council licence, its licence number and its expiry date?
• 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 in your care?

None of the businesses listed here publish a vaccination schedule or a breed policy, so ask rather than assume an answer either way. See our Swindon prices guide for what the four businesses that publish a price charge, and what to ask everyone else.