Every year the same thing happens. Somebody rings in the third week of November looking for four nights over Thanksgiving, and every place within twenty minutes is full. Here is how to not be that person.
The short answer
Thanksgiving: book by early October. The week itself is the single busiest stretch of the year for boarding, and the Wednesday and Sunday either side are the worst days of it.
Christmas and New Year: book by early November. The stretch from about the 22nd of December to the 2nd of January behaves like one long weekend.
Any other holiday weekend: two to three weeks. Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day all fill, just not as hard.
An ordinary weekend: about a week. Sometimes less. Ask.
At Hilltop we will always tell you honestly whether a date is realistic. If we are full we will say so rather than putting you on a maybe list that never turns into anything.
Why it fills earlier than people expect
Holiday travel is planned months out, so the families who board every year book as soon as their own plans are fixed, often in September. By the time somebody starts looking in November they are not competing for the last few spots, they are competing for the spots that opened up because of a cancellation.
Home settings like ours fill faster than facilities, for the obvious reason. There is one house and one yard. A franchise with a purpose-built building has more capacity and more flexibility, and on a holiday week that is a genuine advantage they have over us.
What to have ready when you call
It makes the conversation two minutes instead of ten.
- Exact drop-off and pickup dates, and roughly what time
- Whether your dog has stayed anywhere before, and how it went
- Vaccination status, particularly Bordetella, since it is the one that lapses quietly
- Any medication, with the actual schedule
- Whether your dog has stayed with us before
If your dog has never boarded anywhere, do not make a holiday week the first attempt. Book a single night sometime in October instead. It costs one night and it tells everybody, including your dog, whether the real booking is going to go well.
If everywhere is full
It happens. Some things that actually work:
Ask about a shorter stay. Four nights might be impossible while two is fine. Sometimes a friend can cover the ends.
Ask to be told about cancellations, and be specific that you can take a short-notice slot. People do cancel.
Widen the radius. Fifteen extra minutes of driving on one day of the year is not much. Places in Bethlehem, Nazareth and across the river in Phillipsburg are all a reasonable run from Easton.
Consider a sitter at your house. A different product with different tradeoffs, but for an anxious or elderly dog it is sometimes the better answer anyway.
What a holiday stay looks like here
The same as any other stay, which is the point. Dogs sleep inside the house on dog beds. They are out in the half-acre yard through the day. There is no skeleton holiday crew, because it is the same two people it always is.
We do not run a separate holiday rate. Boarding is $50 a night in December the same as it is in March.
The one difference is that we take fewer dogs over the holidays rather than more, because a house full of dogs and a house full of visiting family do not mix well. That is exactly why the dates go early.
Book it
If you already know your dates, tell us now even if the trip is months away. It costs nothing to hold a conversation and it is the whole difference in late November.
(484) 714-6624, or the contact page.