Our story
A walk round the block is not a day
The K9 Bus is run from Settle, at the southern edge of the Yorkshire Dales, by two people who have had dogs their whole lives and wanted theirs to have a better Tuesday.
The K9 Bus started with a simple thought in a house in Settle with a baby, a dog and two people who had spent their whole lives around dogs: a walk round the block is not a day.
Ian spent a decade as a professional cyclist, which means he is used to early starts, long days outdoors and a routine you can set your watch by, and he and his partner wanted their dog to have the kind of day they would want themselves: friends, fresh air, somewhere safe to run flat out, and a lift there and back.
So they are building a bright yellow bus that stops at your door, gives your dog its own space among friends it gets to know, drives to a private, fully fenced field in the Ribble Valley for a couple of hours of proper play, and brings everyone home tired and happy, with photos of the day in your inbox by teatime.
You’re not just booking your dog a walk. You’re sending them on an adventure with their friends.
The short version
- Based
- Settle, North Yorkshire
- Run by
- Ian Bibby and his partner
- First route
- The Ribble Run
- Dogs
- Lifelong owners, both of them
Their baby, Hugo, is the reason the bus starts early and finishes on time.
Why a bus, why a field
Three decisions, and the reasons behind them
Why a bus rather than a van full of dogs
Because a dog's day should have a shape. A bus that arrives at roughly the same time, with the same handlers and the same group of dogs, becomes a routine your dog recognises from the sound of the engine. And because a bus is visible: you can see it, your neighbours can see it, and a business you can see on the A59 is easier to trust than a website.
Why a fenced field rather than the open fell
Because the fells around here are full of sheep, drystone walls, roads and ground-nesting birds, and none of that mixes with a group of unfamiliar dogs off lead. A private, fully fenced field is smaller and less romantic, and it is the only version of this that we would be happy putting our own dog on.
Why the Ribble Valley first
Because the first route has to be short enough that no dog spends more than about ninety minutes on the bus, and dense enough to fill it. Langho to Waddington is about twelve miles end to end with seventeen thousand people in Clitheroe alone. The Dales, where we live, are the harder route and they come later — which is a strange thing to admit and it is true.
The cycling, briefly
Ten years of early starts
Ian raced as a professional road cyclist from 2009 to 2019: British national titles in cyclo-cross and criterium racing, a stage win at the Tour of Japan, the Mitchelton Bay Classic, a Tour of Britain stage podium, and England at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. He coaches cyclists now, at ianbibby.cc.
None of that qualifies anybody to look after a dog, and we are not going to pretend it does. What it is good for is the unglamorous part of this job: getting up at half past six, being where you said you would be, doing the same thing well twice a week for years, and knowing that the difference between a good day and a bad one is usually the preparation you did the night before.
What we are not saying yet
The bus has not been bought. The field agreement is not signed. The insurance quotes are out and the two councils have been written to. None of those things will be described here as done until they are, and no route carries a booking until all of them are true for that route.
That is a strange thing for a website to say, and it is the most useful thing we can tell you about how this will be run.
The name, and the yellow
A destination blind, because that is what a bus has
The mark is a destination blind: the panel on the front of a bus that tells you where it is going. Every route has one, and it is what you will see on the front of the vehicle, at the top of your ticket and on the album from the day.
The yellow is the American school-bus yellow, and no, we did not invent it — a yellow bus is simply what a dog bus looks like, in the way a brown van is what a parcel looks like. The part that is ours is everything around it: the blinds, the named runs, a timetable with real times on it, and photographs of real dogs in real Yorkshire and Lancashire weather.
Ready when your dog is.
Every dog on the bus has been met first, and that is the whole reason it works. It takes twenty minutes, it costs nothing, and then you can book any Tuesday or Thursday you like.
£26 per dog per adventure · first adventure £23.40 · free to register, and nothing to pay until you book.