So we're collecting it, one facility at a time, starting from the official record of who is actually licensed.
Boarding Scout began with a week of phone calls. A foster dog needed somewhere to stay, and finding it meant working through one facility after another asking the same five questions — because none of the answers were published anywhere.
Does the day revolve around group play, or is there a quieter option? Is anyone on site overnight? Is there an evaluation first, and is it a group test? How recent do the vaccinations need to be? Are there breed restrictions?
Every owner asks these. No facility publishes them. So the information lives in phone calls, and everyone makes the same calls over and over.
Most directories start with a search engine and list whatever surfaces. That produces a list of businesses good at marketing, not a list of businesses that exist.
We start from the licence register instead — the state or city record of every facility legally permitted to board animals. It's the complete set by definition, and it includes the small operations, the veterinary practices that board, and the places that never bought an advert.
We obtain the official licence list for each market, through public records requests where necessary.
We contact each facility directly and record what they actually offer, in their own words.
Nothing is published about a facility until they have seen it and confirmed it is correct.
Nine states license boarding facilities centrally. The rest devolve it to counties and towns, which is why no national list exists — and why we build market by market rather than claiming coverage we do not have.
Boarding Scout started as a personal problem and became a project because the gap turned out to be much larger than one animal and one week.
If you run a facility, or you have found something wrong in a listing, please get in touch. Corrections are welcome and acted on quickly.
4,269 licensed facilities. Filter by what your animal actually needs.