Why Meet and Greets Matter Before Dog Boarding

A meet and greet can look like a formality. You visit, the dog has a sniff, everyone is pleasant and a date goes in the diary. For a nervous or reactive dog it is far more than that. It is the first and best chance to work out what their stay should look like, and whether it should happen at all yet.

It is an assessment, not an audition

Owners often arrive apologising in advance. Please do not. We are not judging your dog and we are not grading your training. We are gathering information, and a dog who shows us their difficulties is giving us the most useful visit possible.

What we are watching for is practical. How does your dog handle the car park and the gate? What do they do when a stranger appears at a distance? Do they take food here, or has their appetite switched off? How long does it take them to move from scanning to sniffing? How do they recover after something startles them?

You see the site properly

You get a tour, and you should use it. See where your dog would sleep, where they would be walked and how the exercise areas are separated. Ask where dogs can see each other and where they cannot. Ask what happens when it rains, and what the site sounds like at six in the morning.

The point is that you should be able to picture your dog's day accurately while you are away. Owners who can picture it worry considerably less.

We identify the likely challenges honestly

By the end of the visit we will tell you what we think will be hard. It might be the handover. It might be men your dog has never met, or the first night, or how they cope when their exercise is not on their usual route.

Naming those things is what makes them solvable. Every one of them becomes a piece of the preparation plan rather than a surprise on day one.

It produces a plan, not just a booking

What comes out of a meet and greet is a route to a good stay, at your dog's pace.

• Further meet and greets if the first visit suggests they would help
• Confidence sessions where you stay with your dog while they explore
• Gradual handovers that build up in small, predictable steps
• A day trial of a few hours, or an overnight trial
• A clear description of the routine we will follow during the stay

It builds the relationship before it is needed

The person who greets your dog on the first day of their stay should not be a stranger. Every visit beforehand turns an unknown person into a familiar one, and by the time it matters, your dog has already decided about us in your company rather than without you.

Marcus is particularly good with dogs who struggle with strangers, and much of that is patience: no reaching, no fussing, no insisting on contact. Dogs are allowed to make the first move, or not to make it at all.

How to get the most from your visit

• Come at a time when your dog is normally calm rather than at the end of a busy day
• Bring their usual lead and a securely fitting collar or harness, not a new set
• Bring the treats they actually like
• Tell us the difficult history, including anything you have been embarrassed about elsewhere
• Bring your questions written down, because you will forget them otherwise
• Let your dog set the pace during the visit, including doing nothing at all

Sometimes the answer is not yet

Occasionally a meet and greet tells us that a dog needs considerably more preparation than the dates allow, or that boarding is not right for them. We will say so. It is a difficult conversation and it is much better than the alternative, which is a dog spending a week somewhere they cannot cope.

Most of the time, though, the meet and greet is the beginning of something that works. It is where a dog stops being a booking and starts being an individual we know.