WHY YOUR DOG WILL LOVE IT

Seven acres of doggy heaven in our secure, private field. Our Adventure Field is all about play, fun, socialisation and relaxation – in a safe, well-managed and healthy environment.

We believe that our Adventure Field can accommodate any dog and its wonderful quirks, and we have seen dogs’ confidence transform after just a few visits to our site.

Barkour Playground

Our iconic playground is a four-pawed favourite, complete with apparatus made from tyres, trailers, planks, ramps and trampolines. We have sourced and recycled frames, pallets, tree stumps and bark, tyres, farm trailers, planks and ramps to make an exciting range of apparatus for your dog to enjoy. Our high and low-rise walkways, sandpits and hillocks make for great stability work and digging, letting your dog do what it loves best while getting some good exercise too. The playground also offers great mental exercise, as dogs experiment with movement in different ways through the obstacles.  We love watching our gang play, clamber on, weave and dodge, balance (sometimes unsuccessfully) and generally cause chaos on our Barkour Playground. They also love to chill around under or on top of the equipment, once the madness has subsided. 

It’s like Doggy daycare on steroids!

Water Fun

We have a large, dug-out pool complete with a water filter and purpose-built steps for safety. This is a huge hit for our water babies, and we have also seen dogs discover their love of water in our pool. It provides great relief in warmer weather, and our crazy zoomers love using the pool to cool off after an episode of going berserk.

Secure Area

Seven acres of secure fencing. Our fencing meets “The Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018” higher requirement.

We also have a three-gate entry system to stop the most determined peskies from trying to escape.

Friendly Members Only

To become a member of The Dog Bus gang we have a strict entrance criterion which involves an assessment from one of our qualified staff.  Only friendly, well-socialised dogs are welcome to join us in the adventure field. Ideally they will be with us at least one day per week

Regular visits help to build a confident and well-rounded dog. When attendance drops below once every 2 weeks, we often see dogs becoming overwhelmed in what can be a socially intense environment. Our human team can also really get to know your dog, thus allowing us to support them properly and do their favourite things with them.

NEWBIE DOG, PUP AND PLACID AREA

Not every dog wants to zoom about like a rocket all day, some prefer to chill and watch the world go by. Our Newbie, Pup and Placid area allows our more calm dogs, such as oldies, to relax and feel safe in an environment that is suited to them. Furthermore, these calmer dogs are absolute stars when it comes to our newbie introductions. Their gentle and passive nature soothes new additions and gives them an ideal first impression of our Adventure Field. 

New dogs can be nervous at first, which is why we utilise our NPP area to give them the support they need to grow in confidence as they start their Dog Bus journey. This way, they can get to know the hoomans and the other Dog Bus gang members without being mobbed by everyone coming over to say hello.

Although most puppies are rearing to go with lots of playful energy and confidence, we appreciate that the world can be a big scary place for them, and that they don’t always know their limits! This section is ideal for puppies, and we love seeing them play together among the calm dogs… its like a beautiful bubble of fun and peace! 

Scent and Enrichment Games

A dog’s primary sense is scent, as a human’s is vision. Humans have only around 5 million scent receptors in our noses, but some breeds have over 100 million! So imagine if everything smelt 20 times stronger… in the wild, you would have started to rely on this to find food and detect other humans. Just like your dog has! Think about how dogs greet each other: information is transmitted via noses rather than barks or paw shakes. How something smells gives the dog information on the way it might look, feel, sound, or taste. In fact, dogs obtain more detailed information from scent than we can even imagine. Our human brains and noses are simply wired differently.

As natural scavengers, dogs will be quite happy mooching around, following their noses with the hope of finding a tasty snack. Turning this into a game for them is incredibly enriching and beneficial, and their nervous system actually releases endorphins in response to scent games.

With this in mind, we have created a myriad of games and activities that stimulate, inspire and enrich your dogs mind through scent work. 

Training is fun – fun is training

As part of your dog’s day, we continuously undertake positive reinforcement training, making it a fun and productive learning environment for everyone. As well as the basic agility work that we encourage the dogs to embark on at the Adventure Playground, we also reinforce the useful cues that are used at home,  such as come here, sit, stay, wait, paw and down. We mostly do this because we enjoy it, and as dog trainers it is a natural habit for us – but we see dogs really benefitting from our training, as well as forming a close bond with us as a result.

It’s aMazing!

We have our long grass area for the dogs who like to think they are kangaroos and within it, we have mown a maze pathway for the gang to wander through.

Our Sand Tyres

Many dogs just love to dig! It is a naturally rewarding activity to them despite the frustration you may have as you see your garden or plant bed get shredded.

They are simply hardwired for this behaviour,  some breeds dig to make indentations big enough to lie in. Others, like Terriers who are bred to hunt rodents, are natural diggers, some dig simply for the fun it.

So we have filled two large tractor tyres with sand and oh boy do the gang love to dig in them (it also saves them digging up the field)!

We use the tyre pits with training commands such as “digging pit” to develop a cue word that has a positive association with it by hiding treats in the pit for them to sniff and dig out.

Please excuse any sandy beards the guys may come home with!

Sensory Garden

Our sensory garden provides the ultimate outlet for your dog to become immersed in a cocktail of smells, textures and smells. The garden includes sand tyres, a scent-packed mountain and a large maze for them to explore. 

Our Stable/Barn

When we took on our field we were lucky to inherit a large stable/barn building. The problem being it came without any walls at either end! It did, however, have a roof, one long wall to the side, and a stone floor.

So after a bit of tweaking, hammering and drilling it is now fully walled, glazed, floored insulated and heated.

Because we worked very hard, the dogs said the hoomans can have a kettle; so we have one of those as well! We also have a 12 x 50ft polytunnel as well for extra cover.

Our crate policy.

Crates should be a positive experience for a dog, not a cage. Associate a crate with a bad experience in a daycare centre and you poison the crate at home!

We provide crates for the guys to come, rest and go as they want. The door is always left open. We also have beds and baskets for the guys to crash out on.

Our only exception to closing a crate door is to rest our pups. However, we do this using only very positive association, so that the pups are not over-exercised.