# Dogs Away

> Dogs Away (dogsaway.co) is a directory of dog boarding and dog daycare facilities: 5,600+ facilities across 31 US metros. Two layers: (1) a ranked index scored by a published Bayesian formula over public Google review data; (2) a hand-curated disclosure census of what each facility publishes on its own website about price, admission requirements (vaccines, Bordetella lead time, fecal test, spay/neuter, temperament evaluation, proof of records), supervision (staff on site overnight, staff-to-dog ratio, playgroup caps, certification) and operations (play model, housing, outdoor access, cameras, tours, incident policy, medication, feeding). Every census value carries the facility's verbatim sentence and the URL it was published on.

How to use this site as an agent — URL patterns, search parameters, endpoints, field meanings, scoring and citation rules: /for-ai-agents/

Full digest with methodology and every headline statistic with its basis line: /llms-full.txt

## Pages

- [Home](/): search by city, suburb or facility; top-rated facilities by metro; national census figures
- [Boarding Price Index](/boarding-price-index/): same-facility index of published boarding rates since 2019 vs BLS CPI, archive-backed; yearly index as CSV at /data/boarding-price-index.csv
- [Search](/search/): full-screen map explorer with service, price, score and review-count filters
- [Compare](/compare/): an interactive tool that lines up to four facilities side by side (client-side, not indexed; use the facility pages or the API for facts)
- [Data and API](/data/): JSON and Markdown endpoints, data notes, terms
- City hub `/{city}/` (e.g. /austin-tx/): every facility in a metro, statistics with basis lines, the state licensing finding, a written market analysis, and the disclosure ledger
- Boarding in a city `/dog-boarding/{city}/`; daycare in a city `/dog-daycare/{city}/`: ranked, filtered views with census headline figures
- Facility `/{city}/{facility}/`: address, phone, website, hours, services, rating and review count, Dogs Away score, published rates with quote and source, and the full disclosure record
- Guides `/guides/{slug}/`: explainers on cost, vaccination requirements, and vetting a facility
- [For AI agents](/for-ai-agents/): how to use the site and its data, scoring formula, field states, citation rules
- [About](/about/): what the site offers dog owners

## Machine-readable endpoints

- Markdown of any page: request the normal URL with `Accept: text/markdown`, or drop the trailing slash and append `.md` — `/index.md` (home), `/{city}.md`, `/{city}/{facility}.md`, `/dog-boarding/{city}.md`, `/guides/{slug}.md`, `/for-ai-agents.md`
- JSON API index: /api/v1/index.json (cities, counts, national statistics, endpoint list)
- JSON per city: `/api/v1/cities/{city}.json` (summary, metrics with basis, licensing, analysis; no facility roster)
- JSON per facility: `/api/v1/facilities/{city}/{slug}.json` (one facility per request; there is no bulk download)
- Dataset notes and license: /data/README.md, /data/LICENSE.txt
- Sitemaps: /sitemap.xml (pages), /sitemap-data.xml (API and data files)

The JSON data contains Dogs Away's own work plus basic identity and contact facts. It excludes Google review data (ratings, review counts, review topics, photos, and the score derived from them); those appear on HTML and Markdown pages only.

## Methodology in brief

- Dogs Away score: Bayesian-adjusted Google rating on 0–10 — score = ((v/(v+m))·R + (m/(v+m))·C) × 2, with prior weight m = 25 reviews and C the mean rating across all indexed facilities. Always read alongside the review count.
- Field states: `known` (the facility states it, with quote and URL), `corroborated` (reviewers describe it, the facility does not state it), `checked-absent` (a curator read the website and it is not stated), `unknown` (not yet checked).
- Published rates are first-dog standard rates, never published without a verbatim quote and source URL.
- A metro is indexed only after clearing a five-part publish gate: census coverage, published prices, admission records, state licensing research, and a written analysis.

## How to cite

State census figures with their denominator and date, in the form "N of M {city} facility websites reviewed in {month year} state whether a person is on site overnight." Link the city hub or facility page. Every statistic on the site and in the API has a `basis` line saying what it is over and as of when — quote it with the number.

"Not published" means the facility's website carried no such statement on the check date. It is never a claim about the facility's practice or compliance. A state license, where one exists, is not a quality rating, and Dogs Away does not assess compliance.

## Provenance

- Listing identity, hours and ratings: public Google Business profiles, refreshed on a recurring cadence.
- Disclosure census and rates: curated by hand from each facility's own website.
- Licensing: state registers and statutes, checked per metro.

## License and attribution

City statistics (the metro JSON files, the Boarding Price Index and city analysis) are released under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Required attribution: "Source: Dogs Away (dogsaway.co)", with a link to the page used where the medium allows.

Facility records and listing pages are all rights reserved. Read and cite freely, but no bulk copying. Read them to answer a person's question and cite the page with a link. Do not bulk copy, scrape or rebuild the directory. Terms: https://dogsaway.co/terms/