Dog owners – at last you can have your say with our REVIEWS feature! 

• Good kennels have nothing to fear but a rush of new bookings. 
• Bad kennels should be quaking in their boots.

 One of the most powerful aspects of the internet is that wherever you live, you can meet people online with the same interests as you. This means you can share information, both positive and negative, about the things that matter to you. In this case it means reading what fellow dog owners have to say about boarding kennels, allowing you to make an informed choice.

After getting your dog, one of the most fundamental decisions you have to make where to board him when you have to go away.  You want a place you can trust.

Short of visiting every kennels yourself, or relying on local word of mouth, the next best thing is to read a selection of reviews from fellow dog lovers, who care about their dogs and are concerned about the boarding kennels they use. Using our new reviews feature allows you to make your voice heard. You can praise or complain, warn or reassure.

If you’ve had a great experience and want people to know, then tell us. On the other hand if you would rather stab your eyes out with dog chews than send your pet back to a dire kennels, let us know! 

This new kennel reviews section is something dog owners and good kennels have been requesting for a long time. You wanted to know how to pass on your complaints but also how to share your delight in finding really great kennels. Here’s a typical request:

“I am looking for the best way to warm people about a kennel that was neglectful and possibly abusive towards my dog when she was boarded there.  They are ignoring my letters.  Do you have a place to log complaints for Canada?”

A user review section is a common feature of websites like Amazon and Ebay, and reading a selection of people’s opinions on a kennels will help you make up your mind whether to choose them or not. Modelling our reviews on the Ebay 2-way system, you’ll be able to see the dog owner’s profile, not just the kennels. You can read someone’s previous reviews, learn about their dogs and the kind of standards they’re looking for.

After all one person’s idea of ‘luxury’ may not be yours – try and find people like you, and you’ll be more satisfied with the results.

• We ask for real names, avoiding dodgy aliases, or just plain anonymous ‘guests’ promoting their friend’s kennels, or people paid to add positive reviews
  
• We only use first-hand experiences, not hearsay
  
• We check IP addresses to make sure reviews are not all coming from the same computer or from the kennels themselves
  
• As our positive/negative filter, you’ll be able to see if the dog owner would use the kennels again or recommend them to a friend, which is really the acid test, isn’t it?

From the kennels point of view, this is all to the good. Not all kennels have websites, and possibly some of the best, most caring ones are run by people who don’t have the time or knowledge to get one. Our reviews section means you can still find these little gems, even if they don’t have their own website. (Kennels who want a public profile can in fact use the pages of www.boardingkennels.org as their own kind of ‘mini-site’ anyway. In fact, we hear from kennels that dog owners thing this is the kennels’ own website anyway!)

Now, we are not the only kennels directory or review site, but most just give you a list of kennels and contact numbers, and if they do have reviews then they are often added by ‘guests’ or – guess what – the kennels themselves! (That’s going to be objective isn’t it?!). We personally know of kennels who have admitted doing this and some absolute dives are described in the most glowing terms on some sites. We have the technology to weed out the bad kennels we know about and the IP capturing facility should help prevent bad-mouthing of good kennels by disgruntled former employees or competitors.

Most other review sites only give you a very brief choice of aspects to rate a kennels on, (for example cleanliness and value for money). Our detailed review section is much more thorough covering the points that you have asked us to include and which concern you.

Our ‘five paws’ rating system is based on facts, not opinion.
It’s based on the top 10 kennel ’sins’ such as smell, noise, bedding, state of repair, crowding and the professionalism and friendliness of the kennel owners are all included.

We know how much this kennels review feature has been needed because we have already got a lot of people using it and it’s only been live since the beginning of December 2008.

Here are a couple of extracts:

“Loved everything about your kennel, the facility is clean and well kept. The staff is fantastic you can tell they really do care about my pet like I do. I think Jingles would have stayed if I let him. Just like us he did not want his vacation to end.” 

and…

“I picked my dog up today.  I am happy to say that she seems to be relaxed and well looked after.  I am also very grateful to the kennel staff for the effort they made to make friends with her, as she really doesn’t like strangers.” 

We know it takes a bit of time and effort to write a review, but we’d really appreciate it if you could write about your boarding kennel experience.

Great kennels deserve praise for the time and effort they put into looking after our dogs. Bad ones deserve to be ‘outed’ so that we can stop the suffering. If we dog owners unite and share our experiences, then we help those who need it most, because they can’t speak for themselves… our beloved dogs.