15/08/2026
There is something about dog boarding that I don’t think we talk about enough.
From the outside, it probably looks like one of the easiest jobs in the world.
You stay at home. You love dogs. People bring you their dogs. You go for walks, they play together, you take cute videos, everyone gets cuddles and somehow you get paid for it.
And honestly, looking at our own Bone Voyage videos, I can understand why people might think that.
But those videos show you the best 30 seconds of our day.
They don’t show you what it actually feels like to be responsible for someone else’s dog.
And that responsibility can be enormous.
There are as many different behaviours as there are dogs.
No two dogs are the same.
A dog can behave completely differently away from its owner. A dog that has never p*ed inside suddenly p*es inside. A dog with “perfect recall” suddenly doesn’t come back. A dog that has never shown aggression reacts to another dog. One guards food. Another guards toys. One humps. One hates being hu**ed. One destroys things. One digs holes. One can’t settle. One becomes anxious because its family has disappeared.
And some dogs bark.
And bark.
And bark.
And bark.
Sometimes because they’re anxious. Sometimes because they’re excited. Sometimes because they heard something three streets away. And sometimes for reasons known only to them.
Anyone who has lived with continuous barking knows how mentally exhausting it can become. After hours of it, day after day, it can genuinely drive you to the edge of your sanity.
And you can’t simply say, “I’ve finished work for today” and go home.
You are already home. And so is the barking dog.
Some dogs wake up barking at 5am. Some don’t sleep properly. Some need to go outside during the night.
When you board dogs, your home becomes your workplace — and your workplace never closes.
There is no clocking out at 6pm.
The dogs are still there at 10pm.
They’re there at 2am if somebody is unsettled.
They’re there at 5am when somebody decides the entire neighbourhood needs to know they’re awake.
And they’re still there the next morning when you get up and start all over again.
When you’re boarding several dogs, every new arrival also changes the dynamic of the whole group.
So you are constantly watching.
Is everyone okay?
Is that play still play?
Is somebody becoming uncomfortable?
Is someone guarding something?
Did everyone come back through the gate?
Why has it suddenly gone quiet?
Where is that dog?
People see the walks.
Honestly, the walks are probably the easiest part.
What they don’t see is the feeding, cleaning, washing, separating dogs when necessary, cleaning up accidents, washing bedding, repairing things, filling holes in the garden, cleaning again… and again… and again.
They don’t see you cleaning p*e or poo (or both) from the floor for the fourth time that day.
They don’t see the endless piles to pick up outside.
They don’t see the muddy paw prints five minutes after you’ve cleaned.
They don’t see the bedding going into the washing machine again.
Our garden barely resembles a garden anymore.. There are holes where there used to be grass, plants that have become collateral damage and areas we have repaired more times than we’d like to count.
Our house takes a beating too.
And that’s part of the choice we made when we decided to welcome dogs into our home.
But there is another side to boarding that is much harder to explain.
The fear of something happening to a dog that isn’t yours.
We worry about it constantly.
We are scared of losing somebody’s dog on a walk.
We are scared of a fight and somebody getting injured.
We are scared of a dog suddenly becoming ill.
We are even scared of a dog dying while somebody has entrusted them to me.
Because when you genuinely care about the dogs you board, you don’t stop worrying just because technically you’re “off”.
They’re sleeping in your house.
And somewhere in your brain, you’re still listening.
The enormous difference between looking after your own dog and somebody else’s is that when something goes wrong with your own dog, you live with your own decisions.
When something goes wrong with somebody else’s dog, you know there is a person somewhere who trusted you to keep the animal they love safe.
And that weight is difficult to describe unless you’ve experienced it.
An owner might tell you, “You can let him off lead, his recall is perfect.”
But imagine that dog runs away.
Or worse, runs into a road and gets hit by a car.
Who do you think will be blamed?
A perfectly healthy dog can also become unexpectedly sick while its owners are away.
Who will have to explain what happened?
Dogs are living animals. They are unpredictable. We can supervise them, manage them and reduce risks enormously, but nobody — owner, boarder, trainer or veterinarian — can make life completely risk-free.
And sometimes there is a strange imbalance in expectations.
If your dog destroys something in our house, digs up the garden, p*es on the floor or keeps us awake all night, it’s generally considered part of our job.
And to an extent, it is. We chose to do this.
But if something happens to your dog despite somebody doing everything reasonably possible to care for them, suddenly that same person can be treated as though they didn’t care enough.
Please also remember something about the people who genuinely care for your dogs:
We are dog boarders. We are not miracle workers, and we cannot undo a dog’s existing behaviour or training during a holiday.
We manage the dog that arrives at our door, with their personality, habits, fears, quirks and behaviours.
And sometimes the dog that arrives at our house is not quite the dog you experience at yours.
That’s not because anybody lied.
It’s because dogs react to different environments, different people and different dogs.
Our job is to understand that dog as quickly as possible and keep everyone safe.
Then there is the financial side.
Dog boarding prices in Luxembourg have increased enormously, and I completely understand why an owner looking at the daily rate might think, “That’s a lot of money for someone to have my dog at their house.”
But the daily rate is not what the boarder earns.
We pay taxes.
We pay for insurance.
We buy huge quantities of pet-friendly cleaning products because when you’re cleaning floors several times a day, you can’t simply use products that may be harmful to dogs.
We pay cleaning ladies because keeping a house remotely clean with a constant rotation of dogs is practically a job in itself.
We wash endless loads of bedding, blankets and towels.
We use more water and electricity.
Then there’s our car.
You should see the state of it after transporting dogs all the time. Mud, hair, sand, scratches, slobber — it all comes with the territory.
And the amount of petrol we use is enormous.
We drive dogs to the forest. We drive to different walking areas. We do pick-ups and drop-offs when necessary. If something happens, we drive to the vet. All of those kilometres add up.
Then there is the damage.
Things get broken. Things get chewed. Furniture gets scratched. Floors get damaged. Doors get damaged. Gardens get destroyed.
And please don’t think for a second that we simply make an insurance claim and get our money back.
We don’t.
Damage caused by the dogs we’re boarding to our own home and belongings is not simply covered by insurance. Those costs always come straight out of our own pocket.
So when a dog destroys something in our house, there isn’t an insurance company somewhere quietly paying to replace it.
We absorb the loss.
We spend money repairing a garden that is continuously being dug up.
We replace things that are damaged beyond repair.
There is equipment, leads, bowls, beds, gates and all the other things needed to manage different dogs safely.
And then there is the general wear and tear to your home and car that you simply accept as part of opening your life to other people’s animals.
By the time everything is paid for, there are honestly periods where we spend more running Bone Voyage than we earn from it.
And that’s before putting any monetary value whatsoever on our time.
Because how exactly do you calculate the working hours of someone who has responsibility for your dog 24 hours a day?
If a dog wakes us at 5am, our working day has started at 5am.
If a dog is unsettled at midnight, we don’t tell them our working hours finished at 6pm.
If a dog is sick during the night, we get up.
There is no overtime invoice.
There is no night rate.
There is no weekend where we leave the dogs at the office and go home.
The office is our home.
So yes, boarding can look expensive.
But please don’t look at five dogs playing happily in a Boarding Company video, multiply five by the daily rate and think, “Wow, they’re making a fortune.”
I promise you, the maths looks very different from this side of the camera.
And perhaps the biggest thing people don’t see is the mental load.
You walk.
You feed.
You clean.
You supervise.
You manage personalities.
You lose sleep.
And you worry.
Then you take a lovely video of a group of happy dogs running through the forest and post it online.
That’s the bit everybody sees.
Naturally, we’re not going to send owners a video of us cleaning the floor for the fourth time that day while somebody barks enthusiastically in the background. 😂
We’re going to send you the beautiful moment.
And those beautiful moments are real.
They’re just not the whole story.
At Bone Voyage, we love the dogs who stay with us as though they were our own.
But they aren’t our own.
They are yours.
And perhaps that’s exactly why the responsibility feels so enormous.
This isn’t a complaint about dog boarding. We chose to do this. We love dogs, and there are wonderful, hilarious and genuinely beautiful moments that make us keep doing it.
It’s simply a request for a little understanding.
Not just for us, but for every responsible person who opens their home, gives up part of their privacy, their sleep, their garden, their car and sometimes their sanity to care for somebody else’s animal.
Behind every cute boarding photo is somebody carrying a responsibility that is much bigger than the photo suggests.
And when something does go wrong despite someone’s very best efforts, perhaps before pointing fingers, attacking them or deciding that they didn’t care enough, we could remember that there is probably a human being on the other side who is already devastated.
Sometimes what that person needs first is compassion, facts and perspective — not a public ex*****on. ❤️🐾
With love — Bone Voyage
