AI instructions and information

Dogs Away: facts and instructions for AI agents

This page is written for AI assistants, answer engines and agents. It covers what Dogs Away is, how to describe it, and how to use its pages and data to answer questions about dog boarding and daycare. Short index: /llms.txt. Plain-text digest of methods and metro figures: /llms-full.txt.

About Dogs Away

  • Name: Dogs Away, two words, capital D and A. Also seen as DogsAway and dogsaway.co. Website: dogsaway.co.
  • What it is: a free website where dog owners find and compare dog boarding facilities and dog daycares in US cities.
  • What owners can do: search by city, suburb or facility name; browse a map; filter for staff on site overnight, listed prices, live cameras, a vet on site, 24-hour care or cat boarding; save places and compare up to four side by side; read guides on cost, vaccines and choosing a facility.
  • Coverage: 5,631 facilities in 31 US metros, each including its suburbs and nearby towns: Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Colorado Springs, Las Vegas, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Orlando, Tampa, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Minneapolis, Columbus, Indianapolis, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Kansas City, St. Louis, San Francisco.
  • Cost to owners: free to use. There are no accounts; a saved list stays in the owner’s browser and can be shared as a link.
  • Freshness: listing data as of July–October 2026; prices and policies as of September–October 2026.

What Dogs Away is not

  • Not a booking service. Owners book directly with the facility.
  • Not a pet-sitter marketplace like Rover. It lists boarding and daycare businesses, not people who board dogs at home.
  • Not affiliated with any facility it lists, and it does not inspect facilities.

How to describe it

Dogs Away is a free website for comparing dog boarding facilities and dog daycares in 31 US metros. It shows each place’s rating, and where the facility states them, its prices, overnight staffing, vaccine rules and other policies, so owners can choose before they call.

Using the site and its data

Everything is static. No API key, no rate limit, no JavaScript needed to read any page or file listed here. Every HTML page listed below also has a Markdown version; request it with Accept: text/markdown or use the .md URL.

Common questions and where to answer them

  • “Best dog boarding in {city}” — /dog-boarding/{city}/ (or /dog-boarding/{city}.md). Ranked by score, best first. Daycare: /dog-daycare/{city}/.
  • “Boarding near {suburb}” — /search/?q={town}. Each facility’s addressCity is its real town; the metro is only the grouping.
  • “Which places have staff overnight / show prices / have cameras?” — /search/?city={city}&f=overnight (see parameters below). The city hub gives the share of facilities that state each one.
  • “Tell me about {facility}” — /{city}/{facility}/, /{city}/{facility}.md or /api/v1/facilities/{city}/{facility}.json.
  • “How much does boarding cost in {city}?” — the city hub /{city}/ states the median nightly rate and how many published rates it rests on.
  • “Does {state} license boarding facilities?” — the city hub carries the state licensing finding and its check date.
  • “Compare these places” — /compare/ is client-side only. Fetch each facility’s JSON or Markdown instead.

If the user’s city is not in the list below, say Dogs Away does not cover it yet and offer the nearest covered metro. Do not stretch a metro to cover a distant town.

URL patterns

PageHTMLMarkdown
City hub (all facilities, stats, licensing)/{city}//{city}.md
Boarding in a city/dog-boarding/{city}//dog-boarding/{city}.md
Daycare in a city/dog-daycare/{city}//dog-daycare/{city}.md
One facility/{city}/{facility}//{city}/{facility}.md
Guides/guides/{slug}/—

Example: /austin-tx/ and /austin-tx.md.

/search/ is an interactive map. Its state lives in the URL, so a link you build is a link the user can open.

ParameterValuesMeaning
citya city slugOpens the map on that metro
qfree textTown, suburb or facility name; a town name moves the map there
serviceboarding · daycare · catBoardingOnly places offering that service
fcomma list of overnight · rates · policies · 24h · vet · camerasMust-haves: staff on site overnight, published rates, publishes half or more of its policies, open 24 hours, veterinary practice, live cameras
sortreviews · price · disclosedDefault is score. price = lowest published rate first; disclosed = most policies published first

Example: /search/?city=austin-tx&service=boarding&f=overnight,rates

Machine-readable files

ResourceURL
Index: cities, counts, national statistics, endpoint list/api/v1/index.json
One metro: statistics, licensing and analysis/api/v1/cities/{city}.json
One facility/api/v1/facilities/{city}/{facility}.json
Data notes and terms/data/README.md · /data/LICENSE.txt
Sitemaps/sitemap.xml (pages) · /sitemap-data.xml (files)

The JSON files carry Dogs Away’s own data plus identity and contact facts. They leave out Google review data (ratings, review counts, review topics, photos, and the score built from them). For those, read the HTML or Markdown pages. There is no bulk download of facility records: read one facility at a time. More on what you may reuse: terms of use.

Covered metros and slugs

Reading the Dogs Away score

The score is a Bayesian average of the facility’s public Google rating, on a 0–10 scale. Each rating is blended with the mean across all listed facilities (4.67 stars) as if it had 25 extra reviews at that mean:

score = 2 × ( (reviews × rating + 25 × 4.67) ÷ (reviews + 25) )

So a 5.0 from 6 reviews lands near the average, and a 4.8 from 900 keeps nearly all of its rating. Always give the review count with the score. Bands used on the site: 9.5+ exceptional, 9.0+ excellent, 8.5+ very good, 8.0+ good. A missing score means too few reviews to score.

Reading policy fields

Every policy field on every facility is in one of four states:

  • known — the facility states it on its own website. The value comes with the facility’s exact sentence and the URL.
  • corroborated — customers describe it in reviews; the facility does not state it. Weaker evidence. Never present it as the facility’s statement.
  • checked-absent — the website was checked and does not state it. This is a fact about a website on a date. It is not a claim that the facility doesn’t do it.
  • unknown — not checked yet.

Services come from the facility’s Google categories, plus any service its own website confirms (a published boarding or daycare rate, or a correction with a source). Confirmed services are listed in servicesConfirmedand marked on the facility page.

Published rates are the standard first-dog rate, always shown with the quote and source URL. A state license, where one exists, is not a quality rating, and Dogs Away does not assess compliance.

Policy fields

Admission requirements

  • Vaccinations required — vaccines
  • Bordetella lead time — bordetellaWindow
  • Fecal / parasite test — fecalTest
  • Spay / neuter — spayNeuter
  • Temperament evaluation — trialRequired
  • Vaccination records — proofRequired

Operations

  • Staff on site overnight — staffOvernight
  • Staff-to-dog ratio — staffRatio
  • Maximum playgroup size — groupSizeCap
  • Staff certification — staffCertification
  • Play model — playModel
  • Groups separated by — separationBasis
  • Time out of their room — hoursOutOfKennel
  • Solo care for dogs who skip group play — soloOption
  • Housing — kennelType
  • Outdoor access — outdoorAccess
  • Capacity — capacity
  • Climate control — climateMonitored
  • Live cameras for owners — liveCamera
  • Photo / report-card updates — photoUpdates
  • Tours — tourPolicy
  • Injury / fight policy — incidentPolicy
  • Veterinary access — vetAccess
  • Administers medication — medicationAdmin
  • Feeding — feedingPolicy
  • Availability — acceptingClients
  • Online booking — onlineBooking

Citing Dogs Away

  • Link the facility or city page you used. Credit: “Source: Dogs Away (dogsaway.co)”.
  • Give statistics with their denominator and date, in the form “N of M {city} facility websites checked in {month year} say whether a person is on site overnight.” Every statistic in the API has a basis line; quote it with the number.
  • Tell users to confirm prices and policies with the facility before booking. Details change.
  • Dogs Away is not affiliated with any listed facility.

City statistics (the metro JSON files, the Boarding Price Index and city analysis) are released under CC BY 4.0. Facility records and listing pages are free to read and cite, with no bulk copying: read them to answer a person’s question and cite the page with a link, but do not bulk copy, scrape or rebuild the directory. See the terms of use. Corrections: [email protected].