What Is the Best Way to Set Check In and Pick Up Windows at a Boarding Kennel?

Why open all day hours quietly break your schedule

The instinct for a new kennel is to be accommodating: drop off whenever you like, pick up whenever you land. The problem is that a boarding day is built around fixed care blocks. There is a morning feed and clean out, a midday potty and play rotation, and an evening feed and settle. An arrival that lands in the middle of the clean out means one person walks away from a half hosed run, greets the owner at the counter, does the intake questions, walks the dog to its run, and then tries to remember where the hose was. Every unplanned arrival costs two interruptions, and the dog gets a rushed introduction to the building at the exact moment it needs a calm one. Related: How Do Boarding Kennels Avoid Double Booking During Busy Holiday Weeks?

The other cost is availability math. A run vacated at six in the evening cannot be resold that night, but a run vacated by eleven in the morning can be cleaned and turned over for an afternoon arrival. Without a pick up window, you do not know at nine in the morning whether a run will be free by three, so you either overbook on a hunch or leave the run idle to be safe. Windows are as much about knowing what you can sell as they are about staff convenience, and on sold out weeks that difference is real money.

Keep reading: How Do Boarding Kennels Avoid Double Booking During Busy Holiday Weeks?, What Vaccination Proof Should a Boarding Facility Require Before a Pet's Stay?, Why Do Deposits Reduce No Shows for Pet Boarding Reservations?. See how PetStayr helps you pet boarding reservations and kennel availability.

Choosing windows that sit between care blocks

The pattern that holds up for most small kennels is a mid morning window that opens after the first feed and clean out is done, and a late afternoon window that closes before the evening feed begins. The exact clock times matter less than the rule: windows go between care blocks, never on top of them. Walk your own day with a notepad and mark the hours when hands are actually free. Those are your windows. Sunday hours are usually shorter, often a single afternoon block, because that is when vacation travel ends and staff are thinnest. Related: How Should Kennels Handle Feeding and Medication Notes for Boarded Pets?

Within a window, decide whether you want walk in arrivals or appointment slots. Slots of ten or fifteen minutes smooth the lobby and make intake unhurried, and owners tend to accept them when they can pick one at booking time. A walk in window with no slots is simpler for a two person operation and works fine if your busiest windows rarely see more than a handful of arrivals. Either way, one person should be assigned to the desk for the whole window so nobody is pulled off cleaning to answer the door.

Pricing the night around the pick up time

Most kennels charge per night, which raises the hotel question: does a pick up after the morning window count as another day? The two common answers are a half day charge for afternoon pick ups, or a full extra night after a stated cutoff. Either is defensible. What is not defensible is deciding at the counter. Print the rule on the confirmation, say it out loud at drop off, and apply it the same way to the regular you like and the stranger you do not. Owners rarely resent the fee itself; they resent finding out about it while holding a leash and a credit card. Related: How Often Should a Boarding Kennel Send Photo Updates to Pet Owners?

The reservation record should store the expected pick up window, not just the pick up date. That single field lets you plan run turnover and staff the afternoon correctly. In reservation software it is a dropdown at booking; on a paper book it is one more column. Then confirm it at drop off in one sentence: you are picking up Sunday between three and six, correct? That short exchange prevents most late pick up disputes, because the owner has now said the time out loud and heard the fee that goes with missing it. Related: How Far Ahead Do Most Families Book Pet Boarding for Vacations?

Handling late pick ups and after hours requests

Late pick ups will happen. Flights get delayed, traffic stalls, a surgery runs long. Write the procedure down so any staffer can run it: the owner calls or texts, you note the new time on the run card and in the record, the dog gets an extra meal if the delay crosses the evening feed, and the late fee applies exactly as printed. What you should avoid is improvising a waiver for a favorite regular in front of another owner who paid it last week. Grant exceptions privately, rarely, and log them so the next shift knows what was promised.

After hours requests deserve a decision made in advance, not on a Friday night. Many small kennels simply do not offer them, because sending one staffer to open a dark building alone is not worth the liability or the safety risk. If you do offer them, they should be pre booked, paid up front at a premium, and handled by two people or with a camera running. Whatever you decide, put it in the confirmation email and in the hours block on your website, so the owner who lands at nine at night already knows the answer before they call.