London & the South East · we come to you

Residential dog training for London dogs

We collect your dog from your door, they live and learn with us in the Sussex countryside — and we bring back a dog who can handle the pavement, the café and the crowded park.

Get your door-to-door quote How collection works
  • £2 a mile, door to door
  • 5-star council-licensed premises
  • Visit your dog any time you like
  • Daily reports + body-cam video

The London dog

A city dog lives a different life

Your dog does not get to choose their distance from anything. There is no far side of the field to walk to, no quiet lane to duck down, no garden to decompress in. Every walk starts in a hallway and ends on a pavement — and a dog who cannot cope with that gets more anxious, not less, the more you walk them.

None of that makes you a bad owner, and it does not make your dog a bad dog. It makes them a dog whose training has to work in the hardest environment there is. These are the things our London families are living with:

  • Pavements with no escape route
  • Flat living — no garden to decompress in
  • Lifts, stairwells and communal doors
  • Buses, the tube and black cabs
  • Cafés, pubs and shop floors
  • Parks that are never empty
  • Traffic, sirens and roadworks
  • Dogs passing nose-to-nose on a narrow path
  • Foxes at night
  • Deliveries and buzzers, all day
Rigsby, a white bull terrier, standing attentively on his lead in a pedestrianised shopping street
Rigsby · Steady in the Old Town

The honest question

“Will countryside training hold up on a London street?”

It is the right question to ask, and the answer is: only if the training happens in real places. A dog taught to be perfect in an empty field is a dog who has learned to be perfect in an empty field. So we don’t do that.

The quiet countryside is where your dog sleeps, settles and learns — the conditions that make learning possible in the first place. Then, deliberately, we take that calmer dog back into the noise. From week 5 the work moves out into the real world:

The high street

Hastings town centre on a busy Saturday — narrow pavements, prams, shopping bags, dogs passing close. The same pressure as a London street, at a scale a learning dog can cope with.

Cafés and pubs

Settling under a table while life carries on around them. It is the single skill that decides whether your dog gets to come with you or gets left at home.

The seafront promenade

Wide open, hugely distracting, and full of joggers, bikes, gulls and other dogs — the closest thing we have to a park on a sunny Sunday.

Loading up and travelling

Our own school bus is a moving, rattling, unfamiliar box. Dogs who load and settle calmly on it are the dogs who travel calmly — the first skill any city dog needs, and the one you will use on day one.

Max, a husky in a backpack harness, sitting on the seafront promenade beside the ice-cream kiosk April, in a red coat, standing among the tables and chairs inside a café Neo, a black Labrador, sitting on a shop-lined Old Town street and looking up at his handler Diego, a collie, standing on the seafront green beside the car park

Real dogs, real sessions — Max, April, Neo and Diego, out in the world with our trainers.

And here is what we cannot replicate: the Tube, your street, your stairwell, your lift and your neighbours. Hastings has no Underground, and we will not pretend otherwise. That gap is not something we paper over — it is exactly why parent training exists, why we hand your dog back to you in person, and why the course is only finished when you can do it too.

Door to door

Residential dog training, without the motorway runs

Board & Train families join us from right across London and the South of England. We collect your dog from your home at the start of the course, and bring them back to you when they graduate — driven by our own team, not a courier.

  1. Tell us your postcode

    We work out the door-to-door figure and send it with your dog’s programme plan — before you commit to anything.

  2. We drive to you

    Our own team collects your dog from your home — not a courier, not a pet-transport firm you have never spoken to. You will know who is coming, and they will know your dog’s plan before they knock.

  3. Home again, trained

    At the end of the course we bring your dog back to your door, and show you — in your own street, on your own stairs — what they can now do.

The bits nobody else explains

The week off, and the Fridays

Two parts of our course assume you live down the road. You don’t — so here is exactly how they work when home is a two-hour drive away. Neither is an afterthought, and neither costs you a surprise.

The week off — your way

Dogs on the full 8–10 week course go home for a week part-way through. Rest is part of learning, and it is your first chance to feel the difference for yourself. How your dog gets home is entirely your call:

  • We drive them. Same rate, same way — £2 a mile, counted one way, per journey.
  • You collect them. Some families prefer the excuse to come and see the place their dog has been living.

You can combine the collection trip with a parent-training session — one drive, two jobs. See the next card. (The 4-week puppy course and Holiday Board & Train run straight through, with no week off.)

Parent training, from London

From week 4, Fridays are yours — the sessions where you learn to speak your dog’s new language. A dog trained without their family is a dog who unlearns it in a fortnight. So for London families we run it in three stages:

  1. Start remotely. Your week-4 sessions run by video — no drive, no day off work, and no waiting until the handover to start learning.
  2. Come down for the break. Ideally you travel to us for the mid-course week off: a Friday session together in person, then you take your dog home for their rest week. One trip, both jobs done.
  3. Or we come to you. If travelling really isn’t possible, we’ll send a trainer to London at £2 a mile — they bring your dog home and train you in the place it actually has to work: your street.
The barn at Fairlight Place, where boarding dogs live during their course
The barn — where your dog will be living

Closer than it feels

You are always welcome

Sending your dog away is a big thing to do. We don’t pretend otherwise, and we don’t manage it with reassurance — we manage it with access.

  • Open visits, no appointment. Come and see your dog whenever you like. We have no visiting hours, and nothing we would rather you didn’t see.
  • About ninety minutes by train. Hastings is a direct run from London — closer than most people assume when they first look at the map.
  • Daily reports, and body-cam video of the sessions. You watch the actual training, not a summary of it, every day your dog is with us.
  • No kennels. Your dog lives with us, in the house and around the barn — which is the whole reason a countryside course settles a city dog in the first place.

5 STAR RATED

By Hastings Borough Council for dog care

Licensed premises · Licence No. WK/202503477

We are licensed by Hastings Borough Council and inspected against the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) Regulations — with the highest rating they can award. If you are handing your dog to strangers two hours from home, that licence is the floor you should be checking, wherever you send them.

The programmes

What your dog actually does on a residential course

The course itself is the same one every boarding dog does — the collection service simply gets your dog to it. Travel is charged separately, at £2 a mile per journey, so you can always see exactly what you are paying for.

Boarding School for Puppies

£1,200 for 4 weeks

Puppies 12–16 weeks old

  • Toilet training
  • Obedience foundations
  • Problem prevention
  • Structured socialisation
  • Daily reports + body-cam session videos
Enquire about this programme

Our flagship programme

Boarding School for Dogs

£2,500 for 8–10 weeks

+£300 for large dogs

Adult dogs 16 weeks and over; rescue dogs assessed case-by-case

  • Behaviour-modification coaching and strategy
  • Real-world environment training
  • Parent training Fridays from week 4
  • Daily reports + body-cam session videos
  • Open visits welcome anytime
Enquire about this programme

Holiday Board & Train

£1,500 for 4 weeks

+£300 for large dogs

Dogs boarding while you're away

  • Boarding + training + structured day care
  • Daily training sessions
  • Daily video reports
Enquire about this programme

Every one of these programmes is explained in full on our Board & Train page — the week-by-week regime, the kit list, and the dogs we turn away.

Proof, not promises

Dogs who now go everywhere

Every photo below is a real client dog in a real session — no stock, no staging. Families come to us from across London and the South of England, and their dogs go home to pavements, cafés and crowded parks.

Out in the world

Drag to explore

Ruby, a Jack Russell, lying in a down-stay on shaded paving beside her handler's foot
Ruby · A down-stay in the shade
Henry, a golden cocker spaniel, lying settled beside a café table
Henry · Settled at the café
Rocco, a Rottweiler, lying in a down-stay on a shop-lined pavement, looking up at his handler
Rocco · A down-stay on the high street
Betty, a small white chihuahua, walking on her lead across the seafront green
Betty · Small dog, big seafront
River, a brown labradoodle, sitting on a lead on a shop-lined pedestrian street
River · Sitting outside the café
Ruby sitting on the wooden step of a café doorway, looking back over her shoulder
Ruby · On the café step
Tilly, a long-haired German shepherd, lying calmly on the pavement beside parked cars and an amusement arcade
Tilly · Settled beside the traffic
A trainer walking four dogs together up a wooded countryside path
And the quiet lanes in between

Straight answers

The questions London families actually ask

How much is collection from London?

£2 a mile, counted one way from our postcode (TN35 5DT) to yours, charged per journey. Central London is roughly 65 miles, so about £130 to collect your dog, and the same again to bring them home at the end of the course. We confirm your exact figure when you enquire — it is a straightforward sum, not an estimate we revise later.

Isn’t Hastings a long way to send my dog?

It is about an hour and a half from London by train, and you are welcome to visit at any point during the course — we don’t keep visiting hours, and there is nothing we would rather you didn’t see. Every family gets daily reports and body-cam video of their dog’s sessions in the meantime.

My dog has never lived outside a flat. Will the countryside overwhelm them?

Usually it does the opposite. A dog who cannot switch off in the city often sleeps properly for the first time in weeks once the noise stops. Space and quiet are what make learning possible — and we then take that calmer dog back into towns, cafés and traffic, deliberately, before they go home to you.

Will countryside training actually hold up on a London street?

Only if the training happens in real places, which is why it does. From week 5 your dog works in Hastings town centre, along the seafront promenade, in cafés and around traffic. What we cannot replicate is your street, your stairwell and your neighbours — which is exactly why parent training exists, and why we hand the dog back to you in person.

What happens during the mid-course week off?

Dogs on the full 8–10 week course go home for a week part-way through — rest is part of learning, and it lets you see the progress first-hand. (The 4-week puppy course and Holiday Board & Train run straight through.) How your dog gets home is your choice: we can drive them, charged the same way as any other journey, or you can come and collect them. You can also combine that trip with a parent-training session, so one drive does two jobs.

How does parent training work if I live in London?

Parent training starts in week 4, and for London families it starts remotely — we run your first sessions by video, so you are learning your dog’s new language from your sofa rather than a motorway. Then, ideally, you come to Hastings for the mid-course break: a Friday session together in person, and you take your dog home for the week. If travelling really is not possible, we can send a trainer to you: same rate per mile, and they deliver your dog and train you in your own home.

Do you only take dogs from London?

No. The same rate applies anywhere across the South of England — Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Essex, wherever you are. London is simply where most of our travelling families come from.

Let’s talk

Tell us your postcode

Send us the issues you’re facing and where you are, and we’ll come back with an honest plan for your dog — and the exact door-to-door figure, worked out from your postcode.

What would you like help with? (tick any)

Prefer to talk it through first? Book a free phone consultation or WhatsApp us on 01424 300668