Enquiries
You can contact us at smalldogsolutions@gmail.com or on WhatsApp to +44 7871 319202. If you wish to make a booking, please include the following information:
- A photograph of the vaccination record for the core vaccinations (Leptospirosis, Distemper, Hepatitis and Parvovirus).
- Date of most recent worming treatment and flea protection.
- Details and dates of the service you require.
- Name, age, sex, breed and weight of your dog or dogs.
- Date of the last season for any unneutered female dogs.
Meet & greet
We arrange a phone call or a short meeting via video link, to learn more about your dogs and to answer any questions you might have.
Familiarisation sessions
After our initial online “meet and greet”, we would arrange a short session (up to 2 hours) to meet you in a suitable location, develop a bond with your dogs and make sure they are comfortable with us and the environment:
- For day care and boarding the location would be our garden/home. You would stay while your dogs get confident enough to explore our garden and home, and to interact with us. We would then keep your dogs for a short period (as little as 5 minutes to up to 2 hours, depending of the dog confidence).
- For walks, pet visiting and pet-sitting, it would be at your place, followed by a short walk nearby, if walks are required.
- For training, the location would be dependent on the training needs.
Many dogs have lost confidence over the lockdown and are experiencing a lot more stress in unfamiliar environments. Consequently, during the familiarisation session, if a dog is not comfortable with the situation after 30 minutes, we would do some training with the owner present, limit the session to 1 hour, and retry an other day.
Going forward
After the familiarisation session, we give feedback and recommendations for going forward, and we will confirm the dates, times, logistics, etc.
For daycare and boarding, we then usually arrange a longer daycare session (around 4 hours with standard daycare rate per dog) to asset your dogs behaviours with other dogs in our home.
Price
- £36 for initial training session.
- £20 for each for each familiarisation session (walking or boarding).
If your dog is not ready for daycare or boarding
We introduce your dogs progressively so that we can ensure:
- that they bond with us and can relax away from their owner;
- that they can settle between activities in our home;
- that they can settle in the house with other dogs;
Puppies and dogs who have rarely spent time away from their owner may need several shorter sessions to help ease them in. These sessions will be used to build confidence, reduce arousal, or address social or training issues. This is not unusual, because dogs are quite sensitive to changes in their routine and new environments, and usually need training to be repeated in new settings.
If we feel that a dog would fare better in a different situation altogether, then we would make recommendations regarding what setting we think would be preferable. Where appropriate, we would be more than happy to give ongoing support with the dog, such as walking, training or management advice.