Worked setups · Kennels, dog daycare & boarding

How a kennels' BLAM8 is set up

Stays that span nights, vaccination records as documents, and two dogs' details remembered under one owner.

Worked example: Willowbrook Kennels. A fictional dog daycare and boarding kennels: daycare days, overnight and holiday boarding, trial nights and a meet-and-greet before any first stay, with the dogs' details remembered per owner.

Proven in a full run on the live system on 2–3 September 2026. The businesses on these pages are fictional — worked configurations we built to run BLAM8 end to end on the live system, not customers. Every step described happened in the run it cites.

Set mine up like this See the customer journey

1 · The diary

Diary shape: Stays

A booking occupies the kennels continuously between a drop-off and a collection, possibly across nights, so the diary runs as stays with capacity as how many dogs at once: 20 at a time, open 07:00–18:45 seven days, 15-minute turnaround, 14 hours' notice, bookable a year ahead, with weekly, fortnightly and monthly repeats (six-weekly and quarterly joined the list after the farrier run).

Daycare day

10 hr

exact time

£28 a day, £18 for a half day collected by 11:30; a same-day stay is exempt from the overnight rules.

Boarding

overnight

whole day

£38 a night including daycare, drop-off to collection across as many nights as booked.

Trial night

overnight

whole day

£30, after the meet and greet.

Meet & greet

30 min

exact time

Free, and required before any first stay — the agent enforces it.

Timing is what the customer is offered: an exact time for an appointment they come to; morning or afternoon for work at their address where you manage the hour; a whole day for a day-long job. The diary reserves the real length either way, so it can never double-book.

2 · Before a booking is made

Booking requirements

An eleven-field checklist in the kennels' own words, with the vaccination record asked for as an attachment. The ones that matter most:

Detail	Needed	How it's gathered	Note
Pet name(s) & breed	Required	Asked in the reply, or reused if already known	Remembered on the owner's record for every future stay.
Number & size of dogs	Required	Asked in the reply, or reused if already known
Vaccination records	Required	As an attachment — a photo or scan	A photo or scan attached to the email; the filename is recorded, the contents are never claimed as checked.
Overnight stay — collection date & time	Required	Asked when the booking is overnight	The stay toggle: an overnight booking asks for the collection as well as the drop-off.
Neutered or spayed	Optional	Asked in the reply, or reused if already known
Dog temperament	Optional	Asked in the reply, or reused if already known
Vet practice & contact number	Optional	Asked in the reply, or reused if already known
Medical conditions or medication	Optional	Asked in the reply, or reused if already known

The agent asks only for what is genuinely missing, never re-asks something already in the thread or on the customer's record, and refuses to book until every required detail is present. Documents are requested as attachments and their contents are never claimed as checked — a human reviews them.

3 · The CRM that fills itself

Pipeline and remembered facts

Pipeline

1New enquiry
2Meet & greet booked
3Regular client
4On hold
5Not proceeding

Plus Won and Lost. A contact quiet for 5 days is flagged for a nudge.

Facts remembered per customer

Dog names & breeds
Both dogs under the one owner, reused by the drafter and the portal.
Vaccination status
With the date, so the kennel-cough rule can be checked.
Dog temperament
Read out of the owner's own description.
Vet practice & contact
Filled from a later email, resolved a promise as it arrived.
Neutered / spayed
Asked once.
Medical conditions
Carried into every booking's details.

Extracted from the emails as they arrive, plus the contact's phone number. A returning customer is never asked for any of it again — by email or on the portal.

4 · What the agent knows

Rules and rates it enforces unprompted

Five notes at setup, added to as the run found gaps. The agent applied every rule below without being prompted.

rule
Every first stay is preceded by a free meet and greet.
rule
Kennel-cough vaccination at least 14 days before a stay — the agent refused to book until the jab date was given, and applied the rule in the passing direction when it was.
rate
Daycare £28 a day, £18 a half day; boarding £38 a night including daycare; trial night £30; two dogs sharing a kennel £58; bank holidays £10 extra.
rule
Half-day daycare is collected by 11:30, not 1pm — negotiated in the portal chat when a customer asked for 1pm.
money
Invoice at the end of each stay.

5 · The journey we proved

From the first email to the paid deposit

Run five of the playbook, on a clean slate, with a new customer and two dogs.

Customer

Emails to ask about a trial night and a weekend's boarding for two cocker spaniels.
BLAM8

Drafts a reply that enforces the meet-and-greet rule, quotes the trial night at £30 and the two-dogs-sharing rate at £58 from the knowledge base, says honestly that no dates are reserved yet, and asks only for the three details not already in the email. The customer's record is created with both dogs' names and temperament read from the enquiry.
Customer

Sends the details with the vaccination record attached as a PDF.
BLAM8

Records the PDF as the vaccination document, applies the 14-day kennel-cough rule, holds the trial night and the boarding weekend as two real diary rows, fills all six remembered fields on the record, and resolves the four promises the customer had just kept.
Owner

Approves the reply. Both stays are confirmed, calendar events pushed, a reference code minted into the footer.
Customer

Opens the portal with the reference and asks for a daycare day.
BLAM8

Books it from one message with no questions — everything needed is already on the record — and emails a confirmation.
Owner

Asks the Concierge to draft an invoice for the stay; confirms the card; the PDF with bank details goes out. Sends a quote with an optional extra; the customer unticks it and accepts online.

Proven on a live kennels since

Watched working end to end on our own rig after the run above, each with a test that fails if it breaks.

22 September 2026 It never books a date nobody chose. Every held date is one the customer named or the diary offered, and a drop-off or collection time is the customer's own, never a guess.
22 September 2026 A full date is offered, not booked: the nearest opening is held for the customer and named in the reply, and their yes turns it into the booking in place.
22 September 2026 An attached vaccination card is read, filed against the right dog, and its date recorded as the day it lapses — and the jab has to cover the whole stay, not just the drop-off. The reply waits until the card is read.
24 September 2026 "A meet and greet and then a trial night" in one email becomes two bookings: a 30-minute appointment and a one-night stay, each with its own reference, confirmed by one approval.
24 September 2026 A day you've closed the diary takes no drop-off, collection or daycare. The reply says you're closed that day — never "fully booked" — and offers the nearest open days either side.
24 September 2026 Getting paid: the draft shows the deposit invoice that will go with the confirmation before you approve it, and the balance — the price less the deposit — can be drafted for you the day before collection.
23–24 September 2026 Ask the Concierge out loud (Pro + Concierge plan): which dogs are in on a given day, whose vaccinations run out soon, which invoices are overdue; keep a dog one more night and move it back — each change a card you confirm, the extra night's invoice drafted and cancelled with it.
24 September 2026 Your team: "Put Em on the next meet and greet" by voice puts her on the job, and it shows on her own diary. A member of staff only sees — and can only ask for — what their role allows.
25 September 2026 A morning brief on Today (Pro + Concierge plan): one tap opens the Concierge with the brief as her latest message, and you choose what it tells you.

What this run showed us we still owe this trade

Today's booking details are one set per booking, not one per dog — two dogs' facts travel as one entry. Repeatable per-pet groups are on the roadmap.
Built since · 4 September 2026 — Dependants. You name the kind — dogs — and what to know about each one: breed asked once, feeding notes confirmed each stay, the vaccination expiry a date that holds a booking back when it has lapsed. Each dog is its own record on the owner's card, read from their emails; a stay names the dogs it's for and a lapsed jab blocks that dog, not the other.
The vaccination record was recorded by its filename; its contents were never claimed as checked.
Built since · 22 September 2026 — A certificate sent as a PDF is now read: labelled as the vaccination record, filed on the right dog, and its expiry date taken. The expiry has to cover the whole stay, to the last night, not just the drop-off, and a stay it doesn't cover is refused and explained, never booked round. A new fact fills itself in; a changed one asks the owner first. A photographed card isn't read yet.

Questions owners ask

How does BLAM8 compare to kennel booking software such as Revelation Pets or KennelBooker?

They're built to take bookings through a form or a customer portal, and they do it well, with vaccination tracking of their own. Revelation Pets is £50 to £62 a month and KennelBooker starts at $49.99 a month (prices checked 25 September 2026). BLAM8 works on the emails that don't fit a form: the owner asking about two dogs, a trial night and a weekend in one message. It answers in your voice from your prices and rules, gathers what's missing, and books the stay when you approve, checking the vaccination runs to the last night. You can run it alongside booking software you already use.