Comparing Boarding Kennels Made Easy [Interview]

Sometimes your favourite furry companion might not be able to travel with you and you’ll need to find a suitable place that both you and your dog will be comfortable while apart. Luckily today we have many choices, we have pet sitters, doggie hotels and traditional boarding kennels.

Depending on your dogs needs, a boarding kennel could be the perfect solution for your dog to stay while your away. The big question thought, which kennel is going to be perfect for my dog.

How do you choose and find the best boarding kennels for your dog? Well we found a new website called Comparing Kennels that makes it easy for you to find the best kennel for your dog in the UK, Canada and the USA. We thought it was great idea and wanted to know more, so we decided to ask Poppy a Labradoodle, Daisy a Yorkshire Terrier cross and their peep Ash Grennan the founders of Comparing Kennels, a website that helps you narrow down the best kennel for your pooch.

What is Comparing Kennels and what is it about?

It’s a comparison website and also an online directly to help find pet boarding across the world at any location you desire via a quick search.

Why did you decide it was important to find a good kennel?

I came up with the idea after going on holiday for 9 days only to find my dog underweight and looking terrible, after 24 hours without seeing much improvement I took her to the vets which she was diagnosed with Tracheobronchitis and gastric issues, it took 2 weeks for her to recover.

Tracheobronchitis,(AKA Kennel Cough) is a very highly contagious respiratory disease among dogs. As the name of the disease suggests, it is typified by inflammation of the trachea and bronchi….PetMD

Ash also was hearing about other horror stories and reading various websites, he noticed a distinct lack of information on the web, so he decided to create a website that would be a resource for sharing experiences and giving people a voice to help everyone in choosing suitable pet boarding, and of course avoiding the bad ones.

Does it cost to join the site?

The site is totally free, as the main purpose of the website is simply to help people find good, safe pet boarding (and avoid the bad ones). I really didn’t want to prevent people from posting and using the website. Also all pet boarding businesses are listed totally free. There are additional services which can be used to promote a specific listing.

Future Plans?

We’ve receive some great feedback from users over the past months which has really helped us identify where things can be improved. Currently we are working on:

Creating a progress blog.
Allowing further search refinements via postcode searching and distance filtering.
Providing the option to look for specific types of pet boarding, for example catteries only.

It’s an exciting time!

Thanks so much for letting my readers know about your paw-some site. I just have a couple of favourite questions, that I love to ask dog lovers.

Best advice for travelling with a dog?

The best piece of advice I can give is to prepare, you need to know how long your journey will take in order to determine where you can pull over if travelling by car. Doing this definitely helps prevent unwanted accident and gives your dog a toilet or food & drink break. If the weather is hot remember to bring extra water to help prevent your dog from overheating, and don’t forget to bring a bowl and bedding to help keep your dog in good moral and comfortable.

About the bond with your pet? What can you say about them?

It’s definitely something which I don’t take for granted; I’ve always grown up having cats and dogs so they’re like family to me. One of my favourite things is going on country walks, the dogs love exploring new places and they’re great company.