Very poor experience
We unfortunately had a rather unpleasant experience ahead of our dogs first weeks stay at Home Boarding For Small Breed Dogs. As requested by Sharon, we had made necessary arrangements to cage train our dog at night time in preparation for his stay. As explained to Sharon, our dog was not keen on the cage, and it was not his first choice of sleeping arrangements, but he accepted it. Sharon's messages from the outset were aggressive, messaging more than once "I do hope and pray he does not bark at night time". Sharon proceeded to say that if he did bark, she would have to call our emergency contact to collect him. We found this quite remarkable, as a dog that has not stayed away from home before, and would likely be nervous in unfamiliar surroundings, may bark because of this (as would be possible with most dogs). Sharon's messages made us very concerned for our dogs welfare, so with only a few days before we were due to go on holiday, we decided the only option would be to seek alternative arrangements for our dogs care, resulting in us cancelling the dog boarding with Sharon and Tim. We found a lovely dog boarder who bonded with our dog immediately following a 30 minutes meet and greet, resulting in a successful stay. Note, our dog had 3 full settling in days with Sharon ahead of his planned stay, incurring extra charges. Hindsight is wonderful, we should have followed our instincts, as something just didn't seem right with the set up, and our dog failing to be comfortable. In line with the aggressive messages prior to cancelling our dogs stay, we received a formal letter upon return from our holiday, demanding payment due to the late cancellation of our dogs stay, and threatening us with the small claims court if payment was not made. This confirmed our initial instincts, that we were right to cancel as our dogs welfare comes first.
Sharon and Tim, your response confirms EVERYTHING we have stated in our honest review. Well done 👏👏. Everybody, do you really want to deal with these people?!!
UPDATE TO YOUR 2ND REPLY: Sharon, I just want to remind you that we never said it was acceptable for our dog to bark at night, those are your words!! Jeffrey was cage trained (cage now for sale), but as you need to remember, he is a dog in an unfamiliar environment, and dogs do occasionally bark. An experienced dog boarder would be aware of this.
Reply from Home Boarding For Small Breed Dogs
RE: Dog Stay
Wow! How unreasonible was this review, Rebecca and Steve, not annonymous, is that is not your name, we know who you are.
You left us a 1 star review after a couple of day stays when your dog, Jeffery really enjoyed himself, and you, and we have videos of him enjoying himself, so how dare you say you were concerned about his welfare! Would we have our own dogs, and fantastic 5 Star Reviews from other clients, and a 5 Star Rating from the council on our licence, if we didnt have the dogs welfare at the top of our priority. What a very hurtful thing to say!
You were informed on the phone by Sharron, and on the first visit by Tim on the 21st April, that Jeffery must be used to being in a crate and be fully crate trained.
Jeffery is a very nervous dog, and never in our whole lives have we come across a dog as nervous as this, and you know this, but did very little to get him used to us and our dogs! I thought you cared about his welfare!!!
Talking about the welfare of your dog, you did very little to ensure that Jeffery would have a comfortable stay, as if you did, you would have done everything possible to ensure he would be compfortable staying with us, but you didnt! You had over 2 months to bring him so he can get used to us and our dogs, but you didn’t bring him until approximately 2 weeks before your holiday, and yes this is at a charge. We are a business, not a charity and our prices are low as it is!
More importantly, you had over 2 months for Jeffery to be crate trained and it was evident from the day stays and from your conversations to Sharron that Jeffery was not trained in a crate.
All dogs, and our dogs MUST be fully crate trained to stay with us. You also thought that it was acceptable that if he barked or cried in the night that he would wake the whole house up. Our childrens bedrooms are above where the dogs sleep, so is this acceptable for them to be woken up? No dogs that stay with us bark in the night, and if they did, yes, the emergency number would be called so the dog could be collected. You then realised, that as you hadn't got him used to a crate, that he would bark and get us up.
To anybody reading this, would you like someone else's dog to wake you up at night? Tim has to get up at 04:30 for work on some weeks, and its acceptable for your dog to wake us up? I dont think so!
This was obviously not the case here and you cancelled the stay within 7 days of the start date.
As per the innvoice, which you were first given on the 28th April 2024, our cancellation policy is:
“If you cancel your booking within 7 days of the start date, then 50% of the total invoice is still payable”
We advised you of this and you ignored it. The date of Jefferys, stay and pick up went by and still no payment.
We are a business and we were owed the amount stated, and as you ignored this, off course we would have taken you to the small claims court, like any business that is owed money.
You paid anyway in the end, so you no longer have to worry about the small claims court, but your review is still unacceptable, when it is yoursleves who did not oblidge to stick to our terms and conditions, or care about the welfare of Jeffery and get him used to being with us, with other dogs, and with being crated!!