04/05/2026
This is a cautionary tale of how a perfectly normal situation can rapidly become a complete nightmare.
I recently had a dog boarding with me while the owners were on holiday. We operate an 'airlock' principle when entering or leaving the house, where any boarding dogs are located in the living room, behind a closed door, before the front door is opened to ensure they are secure. This has worked faultlessly since I started boarding dogs in 2022.
On Friday evening, I thought I had checked and proceded to take two other boarding dogs home. Another boarder was actually in the hall also, rather than in the living room as I had thought. As I opened the door to leave, the third dog escaped. Absolutely my fault
A moment's inattention from me lead to the situation that a dog was running around loose from Friday at 7pm to Monday at 12pm when he was eventually secured by someone in a passing car, some 65 hours later. In the meantime, a large number of the owners' families, my family, friends and neighbours were involved in searching from early morning to late at night trying to locate him. Several people with drones, and a sniffer dog organisation were drafted in to help, all without success.
The amount of stress, anxiety and worry caused to the owners, their family and me was obviously horrific - all of which was completely avoidable.
As canine professionals, we have the trust of dog owners that we will take all necessary steps to keep their dogs safe and secure while we have them with us. I have never lost a boarding dog before and I will be ensuring that it will never happen again. The last 3 days have been the most stressful of my life.
The moral is to always check, never assume, because the consequences can be massive. Fortunately a good outcome in this case but that could so very easily not have been the case.
