How to choose dog boarding or day care in Nottingham

Twenty-six dog boarders, day carers and kennels are listed for Nottingham, spread across eight areas and licensed by six different councils: Nottingham City, Gedling, Rushcliffe, Broxtowe, Erewash and Ashfield. Twenty-one are individually licensed home boarders, working from their own house rather than a kennel block; the other five run from a fixed address — three dedicated day-care centres, one boarding kennels and cattery, and one business, Nottingham Pet Services in Carlton, that could not be matched to a register at all.

Home boarding, day care or kennels

Most of what is listed for Nottingham is home boarding: twenty-one businesses across every area, from Nottingham Pet Care and Aunt Sal's Dog Boarding in the Nottingham centre area to Watsons Walkies and Auntie Claire's Pet Sitting in Long Eaton. As with every home boarder on this site, only the area and town are shown; the street address is the boarder's own to give you once you book. Three businesses run day care from a dedicated site instead of a home — Cuddles-A-Plenty in Bulwell, Ruffles Doggy Daycare in Mapperley and Build a Bond in West Bridgford — and one, Pampered Pets (Boarding) Ltd on Lambley Lane in Gedling, runs boarding kennels and a cattery rather than day care or home boarding.

The council licence in this area

Every business needs a licence to operate legally in England, and Nottingham's built-up area happens to sit across six licensing authorities rather than one. Nine of the twenty-six listed businesses are licensed by Nottingham City Council, which publishes its own register with a star rating and expiry date for every entry: seven of those nine hold the council's top 5-star rating, and one, All About Dogs, holds 2 stars. The Paw Pad Nottingham is licensed separately, by Broxtowe Borough Council, at 3 stars, read directly off that council's own published ratings page. Gedling Borough Council licenses five of the businesses here, Erewash four, Ashfield three, Broxtowe two in total and Rushcliffe two; none of these other five councils' own registers show a star rating for the remaining entries, so those listings show the licence and council with no star line. One business, Nottingham Pet Services in Carlton, could not be matched to any of the six registers, and is worth asking about directly. A star rating, where shown, is the council's own inspection score, not a customer review, and is not the same thing as a business's own claim about itself on its own website: a handful of businesses researched for this page state a star rating on their own site that a public register did not confirm, and those unconfirmed figures are not shown here.

Questions worth asking

• Which council licensed you, and what is the licence number?
• What vaccinations do you require, and how long before the stay do you need to see proof?
• Do you have a policy on kennel cough?
• How many other dogs, and from how many households, will be there during my dates?
• 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?

None of the businesses listed here publish a vaccination schedule or a stated insurance position beyond their licence, so these are all worth asking directly rather than assuming an answer either way. See our Nottingham prices guide for the one published price found among the twenty-six.