About GoodHound

The problem we're fixing

Most pet-care directories list anyone who pays. The biggest spender sits at the top. There's no way to tell who's actually safe to leave your dog with.

That matters because every commercial dog daycare and boarder in England has to hold a council animal-activity licence under the 2018 DEFRA Animal Welfare Regulations. Councils inspect the premises, check insurance, and award a star rating. It's public data. Nobody surfaces it.

How GoodHound works

We cross-reference every listing against the local council's animal-activity register. Where a licence exists, we show the number, star rating and last inspection date. Where one is required but missing, we say so.

Reviews come from confirmed bookings only. No anonymous star-bombing, no fake five-stars from competitors. Photos are dated and refreshed. Fees are out in the open. The directory is free for businesses to be listed. We don't take commission.

Why it exists

The Simpsons grew up surrounded by dogs. Charlie's grandmother, Jackie Perry, worked for Crufts and bred Pekinese and Dobermans, so dogs were a constant fixture of family life. We've kept that going. Our house today is shared with two dogs: Senna, a Staffy, and Django, a Spanish Mastiff cross German Shepherd.

Django was rescued from Spain. He was four days old when he was found in a bin bag in a ditch outside a killing station, where Spain has long struggled with mass street-dog euthanasia. Two of his five siblings died in the bag. A local vet handed the survivors to Maria Matias, who runs a dog and cat sanctuary on her farm, where the animals grow up around her children and other rescues. Django came home with us from there.

That story is why we built GoodHound. When you have a dog you love, finding decent care is the only thing that matters - and every directory we tried felt like it had been sold to whoever paid the most. The carers who'd done the paperwork, the council registrations, the insurance, were buried under the ones who'd bought the ad. So we built the directory we actually wanted to use.

Meet the founder

Lorna Simpson

Founder

Lorna runs GoodHound. She makes the call on every listing, every editorial decision, every tier of verification. The bar is simple: would we be comfortable leaving Senna or Django with this carer?

If a listing doesn't pass that test - whatever the licence number, whatever the reviews say - it doesn't go up.