How to choose dog boarding or day care in York

Fourteen dog boarders, day cares and kennels are listed for York, split between City of York Council's own licensing area — York city centre, Acomb, Clifton, Rawcliffe & Nether Poppleton, Fulford, Haxby & Wigginton, Dringhouses & Woodthorpe, and Huntington & New Earswick — and North Yorkshire Council's area around Tadcaster. Six are home boarders, five run boarding kennels, and two run day care from a dedicated site (two of the home boarders, Paws in the Countryside and Waggy Tails / Heather's Lavender Dog Hotel, also offer day boarding or day care alongside overnight stays). What matters most when choosing depends on which of these you need.

Home boarding, kennels or day care

Six businesses board dogs in the boarder's own home rather than a kennel block: Golden Paws of York in Acomb; Good Boy Pet Services, YORPAWS and Waggy Tails / Heather's Lavender Dog Hotel in the Haxby & Wigginton area; and White Daisy Home Boarding & Pet Sitting and Paws in the Countryside near Tadcaster. Petpals York, based in York city centre, is a franchise that arranges home boarding through a network of carers rather than boarding dogs at one fixed address itself. Five businesses run boarding kennels instead: Rose Cottage Farm Kennels & Cattery and Foss Bank Kennels within the city, and Rose Farm Boarding Kennels, Dunholme Grange Boarding Kennels & Cattery and Ackerley Park Kennels & Cattery further out towards Tadcaster, Boroughbridge and Nun Monkton respectively. Stud Farm Country Club for Dogs and Peach's Pals run day care from a dedicated site rather than a home. 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.

Two councils, two very different registers

City of York Council licenses everything within the city boundary and publishes a live, searchable register on its own website, giving a licence number, star rating and expiry date for every home boarder, kennels and day care it licenses. Five businesses listed here — Rose Cottage Farm Kennels & Cattery, Golden Paws of York, Stud Farm Country Club for Dogs, YORPAWS and Waggy Tails / Heather's Lavender Dog Hotel — are confirmed against that register, all currently rated 5 stars except Rose Cottage Farm at 3 stars. Two more, Good Boy Pet Services and Petpals York, do not appear on the register under a confirmed licence, so no council licence block is shown for either; Good Boy Pet Services states on its own site that its licence was approved by the council's inspector.

North Yorkshire Council licenses the Tadcaster area, and its own online register was unavailable throughout this research, showing only a message that its data was being refreshed. None of the four Tadcaster businesses listed here — Rose Farm Boarding Kennels, White Daisy Home Boarding & Pet Sitting, Paws in the Countryside and Peach's Pals — could be checked against an official register as a result. Paws in the Countryside and Peach's Pals each state a licence detail on their own site (a star rating and a licence number respectively), but neither claim could be confirmed independently, so no council licence block is shown for them either; treat a self-stated licence claim as a starting point for a question, not as a checked fact. The two Clifton-area kennels, Dunholme Grange and Ackerley Park, also sit within North Yorkshire Council's area, some 9 to 10 miles and 6 to 7 miles from York city centre respectively, and are in the same position.

Where a star rating is shown, it is the council's own inspection score, tied to how often the licence is reinspected, and is not a customer review — treat it the way you would a food hygiene rating rather than a Google star.

Why York lists relatively few home boarders

City of York Council's own register names dozens of individual home boarders across the wider city, far more than the six shown here. Most of that register lists a personal name with no public trading name, website or phone number attached: a private licence to board dogs at home, not a business anyone browsing online could find or ring. This directory only lists a home boarder once it has a public, working phone number, so a name on a register with nothing else public is left out rather than listed with no way to book it. That is also why Fulford and Dringhouses & Woodthorpe currently show no business at all here, even though the council register does list home boarders registered to addresses in both areas: none of the names found had a findable phone number or trading identity. If you live in either area, it is worth asking City of York Council directly for its current list of licensed home boarders.

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?
• 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?
• 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 stated insurance position beyond what appears on their own licence or website, so ask rather than assume an answer either way. See our York prices guide for what the six businesses that publish a price actually charge.