The short answer
Photograph and film every area an owner would want to see, with real dogs in it, and put it on a page of its own rather than scattering it through the site. Add a daily routine page so the owner knows what happens in those rooms, and say plainly how they will hear from you while their dog is with you. An owner choosing boarding is choosing where their dog will live for a week, and stock photography of a golden retriever on a beach tells them nothing.
Every area, not the best one
The gallery covers the whole journey a dog makes through your site:
- The entrance and drop-off, so the owner knows where to park and which door.
- Each play area, indoor and outdoor, with surfaces visible.
- The sleeping areas, and this is the one that matters most for boarding. Show an actual run or room, with bedding in it, from the height a person stands at. Owners are imagining this room and if you do not show it they imagine the worst.
- The rest and quiet areas used during the day.
- The isolation or sick bay, which reads as competence rather than a warning.
- The kitchen or food prep area.
- The grooming or bathing area if you have one.
- The outdoor space at its actual size, ideally from a height so the scale reads.
Where a kennel is older or plainer than the one down the road, show it anyway and let the staff and the routine carry the page. A concealed area is read as a bad one.
With dogs in it
Empty rooms photographed on a Sunday look like a facility for sale. The same rooms with dogs asleep in them, or a handler crouched with a group, look like a place someone cares for. Shoot on a normal working day, at the times of day the pictures claim to show, with the lights and doors as they actually are.
Get photo permission at registration so you can use these images. It is one of the consents the booking platform should be collecting.
Video does more than stills
Three or four short clips carry more weight than thirty photographs. A walk through the kennel block, filmed on a phone gimbal, front door to sleeping area, unedited. A play session in progress with the sound on. The evening routine. A short piece to camera from the person who will be looking after the dog.
Host video so it does not slow the page: a poster image loads, the video plays only when tapped, and nothing autoplays with sound. A gallery page that takes eight seconds to load on a phone in a car park is a gallery nobody sees.
The routine page does the other half
Pictures show the place, a daily routine page shows the day. Drop-off, morning groups, rest, lunch, afternoon, wind down, pick-up, and for boarding the evening feed, the last garden trip, where the dog sleeps and whether anyone is on site overnight. Numbers where you have them: dogs per handler, group sizes, how long the longest rest period is. That is what separates a page that reassures from a page that decorates.
Updates while the dog is there
The gallery sells the stay, updates keep the client. Say on the site exactly what an owner gets: a photo or report card at the end of each day, a message after the first night, a webcam if you have one, and how quickly you answer a message. Then deliver it, because the owner on holiday in Spain checking their phone is the one who books you again next year.
If you run a webcam, say what the hours are and how to log in. If you do not, do not imply one.
What not to do
- Stock photography of any kind. Owners recognise it and it reads as a business with something to hide.
- Only wide shots of the outdoor space, with no sleeping areas shown.
- Photos from a refit five years ago showing staff who have left.
- A gallery on the home page so heavy the site never loads on mobile data.
- Filtered images that make the paintwork look like something it is not, so the assessment day disappoints.
Reshoot after any change to the building or the team, and at minimum every couple of years.
Where this sits
Facilities photography and video, plus the daily routine page, are two of the six must-haves on the dog daycare and boarding websites we build, and they are the pages the anxious owner reads longest. Real premises photography matters on every pet business website, but nowhere more than boarding, where the owner is handing over the dog and going away.