Dog care in London

London is a working dog city as much as a pet dog city. Walkers move in packs across Hampstead Heath at dawn, Hyde Park fills with off-lead labradors before the tourists arrive, and Richmond Park is one of the great urban dog landscapes in Europe (mind the deer in rut). Battersea Park, Victoria Park, Hampstead Ponds, the Heath extension into Kenwood, Wormwood Scrubs, Brockwell Park, Greenwich Park, Wandsworth Common - the city quietly contains some of the best dog walking in the country if you know where to look. The Thames Path between Hammersmith and Putney is a daily fixture for west London dogs, and the Lea River towpath does the same job in the east.

London owners search hardest for daycare and dog walking. Most flats don't have gardens, most jobs don't tolerate dogs at desks, and a working week without a walker is impossible for the majority. Boarding demand spikes around the big holiday periods and shoulder seasons (May half-term, October half-term), and there's a steady undercurrent of training searches as central London apartment living throws up specific issues - lift behaviour, reactivity on narrow pavements, recall in busy parks.

London licensing is among the strictest in the country. Most boroughs (Camden, Islington, Hackney, Westminster, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets) apply the 2018 animal-activity regulations rigorously, with separate licences for home boarding, daycare, and dog walking groups of four or more. Star ratings are publicly available on borough websites. Several boroughs cap dog walker group sizes below the national norm, and a few have local bylaws on off-lead behaviour in specific parks - Royal Parks especially. Always check the borough register before booking.