Barking Mad provide Sally-Anne with dogs at home when she wants them after her own lovely dogs passed away. Sally-Anne says,

“We wanted to travel and so didn’t feel we could get new dogs of our own but still wanted the dog experience. We’re absolutely loving it!”

“My name is Iris and I’m a host for Barking Mad and I really do love my role. It is absolutely priceless company and considering the joy it brings you I would recommend it to anybody especially if they live on their own, like I do. I lost my husband and then my beautiful Staffordshire bull terrier who died. I was absolutely devastated and it brought me right up as I was down in a very dark place. Of course it’s all thanks to the fabulous Tina. I absolutely love her for it!”

“We are very keen travelers and like to go all over the world. It means that we really can’t have a dog. It’s not fair because we’re away so much and so when we saw your advert on Facebook we thought aha, Barking Mad could be for us. Sure enough, it’s turned out to be absolutely fantastic and we love it! We talked about doing it just ourselves but we prefer doing Barking Mad because we’ve always got somebody at the end of the phone to give you some help or some advice from someone who knows a lot about dogs. All you’ve go to do is try it because you could just have a dog for a couple of days to start off with. I think once you’ve done it once you’ll just think oh it’s just like having my own dog. It’s huge amounts of fun!”

“My story is that I lost a dog a year ago she died after ten years so I was missing having a dog. Because I travel a lot I couldn’t have my own so I decided to become a Barking Mad hostess! The advantage is companionship and there’s somebody to walk with. It’s never being alone, especially if you live alone. There’s somebody always with you when you’ve got a dog. The difference between kennels and Barking Mad is that you know that your dog is going to be part of the family. It’s going to have a normal life not be just stuck in a kennel. I think that’s important for the dogs..”

“Probably the biggest challenge for most people is taking the responsibility of someone else’s dog but with the backup that you get from Barking Mad everything literally is taken care of. When you see the dog for the first time any fear that you had is gone. You’ll love it, believe us you’ll love it!”

“We’ve hosted for Tina for probably eight years now and we’ve had every sort of dog from a Bernese mountain dog down to the tinest Yorkies. They are all lovely in their own ways and our favourite are still the Labradors because they are very easy going and good fun on a walk. At the moment we have a lovely golden cocker spaniel.

It has really helped us as we’ve come into a new neighbourhood and we now talk to lots of different people with dogs and we’ve now been able to integrate into the estate which is lovely.

What we do like is the fact that Tina gives us the dog’s profile sheet which has all the information about the dog. It details the walks, when the walks are and how the dog likes to be on the lead. We always know if we have to give pills and what food the dogs have and literally every piece of information is in there. We had a dog that happened to have an ear infection when he was with us and Tina organised the vet and medication. We didn’t have to worry about that as it was completely down to the Barking Mad team.

I think the advantegs of this are that it gets you out walking and you thoroughly enjoy having the dog there and he’s just good fun. I don’t think we’ve ever had one that we’ve disliked (how can you dislike a dog, really?!).

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed it and so I would say to anyone who’s looking at it to give it a try. See how you feel because I think you’ll enjoy it!”

Watch this lovely video thanking the amazing Kerry for providing wonderful dog guests.

Maralyn welcomes back Berkeley

Watch this video guaranteed to make you smile!