Home boarding or kennels: what is best?

With summer holidays on the horizon, it’s important to remember our much-loved family pets. All too often, we leave it until the last moment to look for options and availability. The question is, does one home board our cats or dogs, or take them to a kennel or cattery whilst away on holiday? It can be a bit of a dilemma, so the professional house cleaning professionals at MOLLY MAID have listed a few factors for you to consider when deciding between home boarding or kennels.

Home boarding:

• Home boarding is ideal when you want to know that your dog or cat is in a warm and friendly environment. Even though your pet is not at home with you, you can be reassured that they are in an environment where you know they will be treated as one of the family surrounded by the  usual hustle and bustle of family life and perhaps other pets to interact with.
• Pets tend to have a few rooms or even one room to roam around in, and let’s face it, it’s bound to be bigger than a kennel.
• If your cat or dog suffers from separation anxiety or needs regular medication and supervision, then home boarding can provide comfort when necessary.
• Although kennels should require all their animals to be fully vaccinated, the chances of a young or old dog contracting something nasty is much less in a home boarding environment.
• As there will be a limited number of pets allowed to be boarding at any one time in a home, if your pet should fall ill or not eat, it will quickly be picked up on and acted upon.
• However, 24/7 home boarding care does tend to come with a slightly elevated price tag.

Kennels or catteries

• Kennels or catteries provide an easy alternative if you have a cat or dog who is happy to be left alone without needing to be in a ‘family environment’.
• Kennels provide opportunities for plenty of dogs to meet each other in an exercise or paddock area, which can be good for improving socialisation skills.
• As kennels and catteries are commercial businesses, they must abide by safety regulations and therefore provide a secure and regulated environment for your dog or cat.
• Should your dog or cat suffer from bouts of aggression, then kennels or catteries may be the optimum solution as they can be kept separated from the other pets.
• Kennels and catteries usually accept multiple dogs or cats from one home so they can share a kennel reducing the potential anxiety of being separated.
• If money is an issue, kennels and catteries tend to be the more economical choice when choosing how to house your pet whilst you are away.

So, MOLLY MAID hopes that we may have clarified the options available to you and your pet and wish you a happy holiday!

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