Multiple In-Home Boarders

I will accept dogs from different households if they've boarded with me before and I know them well. I will not accept a new dog into the mix, unless I have a pretty good idea that they're likely to get along. I've only had one instance where a new dog didn't get along with my dog and a regular guest and there were constant flareups among the three dogs. The key is how well you know the dogs and whether you think they will be a good fit for your household and, if a dog doesn't mesh with your group, what recourse do you have for the rest of the stay. Fortunately for me, I was able to segregate the one dog from the other with baby gates. But that is only a short-term solution and you wouldn't want to have to employ it constantly. Which is why assessing your guest dogs' personalities around others is key.

I accept two households at a time. I insist on a meet and greet for every potential client, so that I know each dog staying with me gets along with my dog. During the meet and greet I make sure to go over my multi-household policy so that they understand that their dog/s may not be my only guest. That is also when I find out if their dog has any preferences or aversions to certain dogs so that I can match accordingly. I do not require that all the dogs meet first because I have a decent sized space that can be easily divided if their are any problems. I always make sure to let the owners know ahead of time if there will be any other dogs besides my own when they show up for drop off and pick up.

I also make sure to send pictures of the dogs playing, sleeping, standing next to each other so that the owner knows that they are getting along. I have been lucky and have never had to keep dogs separate for more than half an hour or so as they got used to each other. I never leave dogs from different households alone together. Period. I generally take crate trained dogs, but if I know that I have a dog staying with me that won't be crated at night,I make doubly sure that any guest dog that would overlap is crate trained. If I have to leave them alone for any reason (bed time, a class, taking a shower) they stay by themselves wherever they spend the night.

Most of my overlaps are for short stays, or with dogs I know really well. For longer stays, or dogs I'm not as familiar with, I would prefer all dogs meet ahead of time. I don't have a lot of options for separating dogs long-term because our apt is tiny and most of our boarders are kennel-free, so an overlap of more than a day or so becomes really difficult.

Most of our recent business has come from repeat clients and I know them well enough to mix and match dogs as the requests come in. I'm very confident with introducing new dogs to each other, but if I have any worries about how they'll adjust, I won't double book dogs for longer periods of time. It just becomes too much hassle to micromanage their interactions to ensure everyone gets along nicely, and deprives one dog or the other of the human interaction they need if I have to separate them and split my time.