I’ve had a look at the long range weather forecast and it looks like there’s at least a week of hot weather on the way, with temperatures predicted to hit 33C over the next few days. So, as always when we have an excessively hot spell, I just want to remind everyone of our policy regarding bookings in hot weather.

We always do our best to honour every booking, no matter what the time of year. However during excessively hot weather it’s often not safe for dogs to be walked. Some breeds suffer badly with the heat, including our old friend Dave in the photo above. So if your walker judges it to be too hot for walking on the day, then they will automatically change the booking to a home visit when they arrive. It will still show as a walk on your list of bookings, but when you receive the GPS tracking data afterwards, you’ll see that your pet didn’t actually go anywhere.

If we can find a shady path we will try to get your dog out for a short walk, normally to a nearby grassy patch. But we won’t walk for the full 30 or 60 minute booking.

We always put the welfare of the animals we look after first and we encourage all our clients to look at the tracking data in the e-mail received after each booking for more information about anything special that happened .

Stay cool!

Andy.

It’s local election day tomorrow (Thursday). So if you’re off to the polling station we can pop in to visit your pets while your out. Pop in visits are just £9 during the day and £18 early mornings and evenings. To book for tomorrow please give Andy a call on 07837 306824.

It suddenly feels like summer is here once again. So with temperatures set to hit around 25C this week, I thought I’d just remind everyone about our hot weather policy and what this means for your pets.

In any form of extreme weather, we reserve the right to amend or curtail a dog walk if we think it will put either the dog or the walker at risk. This includes hot weather. However we do not cancel bookings due to weather unless we can not physically reach you (e.g. because of deep snow in winter). If the walker deems the weather to be unsafe then they will use their professional judgement what to do. Where a dog is home alone all day we would normally change the walk into a home visit so your pet is still let out, fed if necessary and has some human contact during the day.

If however you are at home with your pet you may feel you want to fully cancel a booking. To cancel (for whatever reason) then you must give us a full 24 hours notice before the start time. For example, if you have a booking that starts at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon, you would need to cancel it before 2pm on Monday to receive a refund. If you paid for your walk on a card or via Paypal, there may be a small transaction fee deducted from the refund (Normally around £1). Individual walks and visits cancelled with less than 24 hours notice will still be charged at the normal rate. However if the system of 24 hour cancellation is abused and someone continually cancels walks with minimal notice, we may remove their ongoing weekly bookings from our system and ask them to make individual booking with us in the future.

If you would like to cancel a whole week or more of bookings (for example if you are going on holiday) then we need at least 1 full week’s notice so that we can redeploy our team.In these circumstances we will again be happy to give you a full refund.

To cancel a booking, please telephone Andy on 07837 306824 any time. Please DO NOT text or e-mail as these are not always deliverd to us promptly.

PLEASE NOTE: Our walkers can not cancel or re-arrange bookings when they arrive for a walk. They do however have the option to carry out a home with your pet instead.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about our booking policy please call us on 07837 306824 any time and we will be happy to help you.

Many thanks,

Andy.

Say Hi to Gizmo, who has recently joined us for two weekly walks so he can get a bit more exercise. He’s a friendly guy, who enjoys his afternoons out exploring.

Have fun Giz!

There is a bit of snow around this morning and a few people have been in touch to ask what we do when the weather is bad. The simple answer is we carry on.

We always attempt to honour all our bookings, no matter what the weather is doing. So if you have a booking with us you can be pretty confident it will go ahead, although sometimes we do get delayed by snow etc.

Unlike some other walkers we do not cancel bookings due to bad weather.

If it’s unsafe for your pet to have their walks, then we turn the booking into a home visit, so they still get the visit they need.

If you want to cancel a walk or visit due to bad weather then our normal cancellation policy applies, which means if you cancel withing 24 hours of the appointment starting, you may still be charged for the booking.

In the unlikely event we can’t get to your pet for whatever reason, we will telephone you to let you know and you’ll receive a full refund. However I would like to stress that we will always try to get through.

You can always check the status of our operations on the website or give Andy a call any time on 07837 306824.

I just wanted to make everyone aware that we had a few website issues this morning, which may have meant you couldn’t book walks or look at your online account for a couple of hours from about 8:30am onwards.

I’m pleased to report the problem was traced to a software conflict, which we have now fixed. The website is now fully operational once again. However if you have any walks booked for the next few days I’d appreciate it if you could just check your booking  here to make sure they are all showing up as they should.

Apologies for any inconvenience the outage caused. If you spot any remaining errors please give me a call any time on 07837 306824.

Thanks for bearing with us,

Andy.

This is Jack. He was out for the first time with us yesterday, enjoying a mid-afternoon walk near his home.

Jack doesn’t get along too well with other dogs. But that’s not a problem for us because all our walks are for individual pets.