Safety
What is true today, and what is still open
You are being asked to hand your dog, and quite often your door key, to two people you have met once. This page is the answer to that, written before we need it to be flattering.
How the day is run
2 trained people on every single run Never one. One person cannot walk to a door and watch the bus at the same time.
6 dogs per person, never more The insurer's condition, not our preference. It is what sets the capacity.
12 dogs at most on a bus Derived from the handlers on the day, the field's cap and the vehicle.
0 dogs left unattended on the bus Ever. The interior temperature is logged through the day.
1 new dog per handler per run A first day is never a bus full of strangers arriving at once.
100% of dogs met before they travel A profile, a call, and a free meet-and-greet with a boarding test.
The rules we follow by choice
- The Countryside Code, and leads on near livestock and on access land in the nesting season.
- The Pet Federation's professional dog walkers' guidelines.
- The transport and record-keeping conditions from the day-care licensing standard, adopted voluntarily: restraint, water, journey planning, vehicle cleaning, and a register per dog kept for three years.
- A daily vehicle check, logged, before anybody is collected. A failed check cancels the day.
- An incident log that records near misses as well as bites, because that is what shows a problem forming.
In the field
- Private and fully fenced, ours for the session, gate shut behind us.
- Leads on between the bus and the gate, every time.
- One compatible group per enclosed field. A field with one paddock takes one group.
- No group food games and no shared food. Treats individually, to a stationary dog.
- Several water points rather than one, because a single trough is something to guard.
- A paw and coat check before every dog boards for the ride home.
When it goes wrong
The plans, published rather than promised
Each of these is a written procedure, rehearsed, and on both handlers' phones. They are on this page because the worst thing a customer can be told is “that has never happened”.
A dog escapes
One handler holds the group, one searches, the remaining dogs are driven home safely, and you are called within five minutes — not after we have had a look round first. Then the microchip database, the local groups, the field owner, and the police if a road is involved.
A fight or a bite
Written rules for breaking it up safely, for who is checked, which vet, and who is told. On who pays: our care, custody and control cover responds for dogs in our care, and each owner's own insurance sits behind that. It is in the terms in plain words.
An injury or an illness on the day
First aid on board, then your own vet, then the nearest practice, under the vet-treatment consent you sign at registration. We call you at the time. You cover the fees unless the problem was our fault.
Something infectious
If a dog develops kennel cough or an upset stomach after a day, everybody on that day is told, the days affected are named, the bus is cleaned down, and there is a written rule for when a dog may come back.
A breakdown, with a bus full of dogs
Containment, shade, water, a relief vehicle, and a call to every owner. It is the reason breakdown cover and a relief arrangement are bought before the bus carries a single paying dog.
Your key
A key register, keys tagged with a code and never with an address, keys never left on the bus overnight, insurer key cover confirmed in writing, and a signed key-holding authority from you. After an escape this is the largest risk in the business, and it is run as a system rather than a drawer.
The weather policy, with numbers
| Around 20°C | Shorter field time, water every fifteen to twenty minutes, shade used deliberately. |
|---|---|
| Around 24°C | Morning only. A field with water and shade is preferred, and any dog flagged as heat-risk is offered a free move instead. |
| 27°C, or a heat-health alert | The day is cancelled and refunded. The same goes for an amber or red weather warning on the route, or a road closure that makes the run impossible. |
These are prompts, not verdicts. Air temperature alone is not the decision: humidity, direct sun, the ground, the shade in the field and the individual dog all matter. Above the first threshold a handler makes the call and records what they observed and what they changed — which is the evidence if anyone ever asks.
A written heat matrix is reviewed by a vet before the first summer and kept with the emergency plan. A logged interior temperature sensor with an alert is part of the vehicle specification, not an afterthought.
Certificates and claims
What we may say, and when
Every safety claim on this site has a document behind it and a switch in the admin, and the switch is only turned on once the document exists. A badge below means the certificate is held and the date it was last checked is beside it. No badge means no certificate yet, and we would rather show you a gap than a claim.
No badges here yet, and that is deliberate
Insurance, canine first aid, a DBS check and the licensing position are all being put in place before the first dog boards. Each one appears on this site the day the certificate exists and not a day earlier, with the date it was checked beside it. Anything else would be a badge for something we have not done.
On licensing, precisely
Collecting and returning dogs by vehicle is widely understood to sit outside the 2018 animal-activity licensing regime, which covers businesses that house dogs at a premises. That reading is reasonable and it may well be right. It is not established, and we are not going to publish our own reading of the law as though it were.
So we have written to both authorities involved — the council where the bus is based and the council where the field is, which are in different counties — setting out the exact operating model and asking each for a written determination. We will publish what they say, or the licence number if one turns out to be needed.
Until then this page says nothing else about it. Never “licensed”. Never “council approved”.
On the vehicle
The bus has not been bought, and the restraint system is being designed by a commercial vehicle converter and accepted by both insurers before it is built. Until that is signed off, the most this site will say is that each dog has its own secured space on the bus. Not “a harnessed seat”. Not “never a crate” — a properly engineered pod may turn out to be the safest option for some dogs, and ruling it out in advance to sound good would be a poor trade.
Never on this site
Star ratings, awards, “vet approved”, review counts that do not exist, “the UK's first”, “the only”, “licensed” without a licence, “DBS approved” — which is not a thing, because a basic DBS is a disclosure we volunteer rather than an approval anybody gave us — or any suggestion that a vet, groomer or shop that takes our cards endorses us.
Questions we have not answered here?
Ask them before you register rather than after. Anything about a particular dog goes straight to Ian.
£26 per dog per adventure · first adventure £23.40 · free to register, and nothing to pay until you book.