Confidence Stay at Royvon – Dog Boarding for Anxious Dogs
Open up new possibilities for you and your dog with our dog boarding for anxious dogs. We create a calm and supportive environment where nervous dogs can feel safe and understood. Since 1959, we’ve helped thousands of dogs and their owners feel more confident about time apart. Our Confidence Stay is designed as a gentle first step.It’s a short, overnight visit that introduces your dog to our team and space slowly, without pressure. It’s the perfect way to explore anxious dog boarding without committing to a whole stay.
Whether your dog is fearful of new places, struggles with separation, or simply needs extra reassurance, our approach is focused on understanding how to help an anxious dog build confidence at their own pace. We offer bespoke options for dog boarding for nervous dogs, including enrichment walks, one-on-one play, and around-the-clock care from experienced staff trained to work with reactive behaviours.
What is a Confidence Stay?
We know that having an anxious dog can make for an anxious owner too. The unpredictable nature of your dog’s fear adds stress to everyday life and makes normal activities seem impossible. We meet many owners who don’t feel they can go on holiday because their dog can’t be left anywhere else other than with them, with a whole range of guilty feelings that comes with that.
The Confidence Stay has been designed to help nervous dogs to settle. Whether their challenge is the new environment, new people, a new routine or simply being away from you, this two-day, one-night overnight stay gives your dog the chance to experience Royvon for a short while before committing to anything longer.
Our dog boarding for anxious dogs is a perfect step towards freedom from those feelings and the chance to go on holiday without worrying about leaving your dog unhappy. Our aim is to help you and your dog to move forward at whatever pace they need to feel comfortable, ensuring that no dog ever suffers distress and you can feel good about leaving your dog in our care.
What does a Confidence Stay include?
When you bring your anxious dog for a Confidence Stay, you will be met by a team member at drop-off. They will greet you and your dog, talk to you and listen to everything you have to share about your dog and what they need to have to feel at home. You can ask all the questions you need and your dog can have a good sniff around.
Over the two days that your dog is with us, they will take part in a group or solo play session, determined by their carer as to which is most beneficial to your dog’s needs, as well as a nature enrichment walk with lots of opportunity to sniff and explore, a brilliant way for dogs to relax and let off some energy in a low intensity way. In addition, before going to bed, there will be a late night comfort walk for the chance to toilet.
At the end of that first day, you will receive a report about how your dog has settled in, what they have been up to and any possible areas of concern and appropriate actions taken.

When you come to collect your dog the next day, you will be met by one of the team to make sure you have chance to ask any further questions and you will receive your day two report, including recommendations for next steps, depending on what your ultimate goals are for your dog.
Before arrival, you will be able to share all of the information needed about any medical or feeding needs, as well as ensuring vaccination records are up to date and any comfort toys or blankets are registered. We provide quality options for these and you may prefer to leave treasured belongings at home but we know that these can be important to anxious dogs.
Alfie and familyxx
Especially Tilly, Millie and Ella who looked after my German Shepherd Ralphy. It was so clear to see how loving, caring and attentive you all were with him … it truly made a difference.
When I got home, he was relaxed, happy and clearly well looked after. It’s a huge comfort knowing he’s in such good hands.
Thank you again for all the love you gave him.
I love getting the daily photo updates and seeing him playing with his friends. It’s such a relief knowing he’s in a safe and stimulating environment while I’m at work.
Highly recommend to any dog parent looking for peace of mind and a tired, happy dog at the end of the day!
Olive has just completed her three weeks intense training and it’s like we’ve brought home a different dog. Not only is she calmer in the house, but we can now walk her without her being petrified of every noise and person that comes near her. She’s even just walked the school run with me.
Romeo and the team at Royvon have been a godsend to us, and we can’t wait to see how much further they can help Olive grow into a much loved happy and confident family pet.
I found royvon by sheer chance and it’s changing our lives. The staff were from the very first contact to his stays now so comforting and reassuring, seeing my obvious nerves about Hunters behaviour Chloe especially gave me all the time in the world, listening to my ever ending knowledge dump about hunter, why’s he’s like this, triggers, how once he’s settled he’s lovely and since the day of his confidence stay i’ve not looked back. dropping him off to strangers which is absolutely my worst fear with a reactive dog and they set such an energy he’s excited to leave me and settles in so happily. I get regular updates of how he is, what he’s doing, anything they want to tell me and it is just the best thing to open my phone to. i get photos and videos of walks and play, updates on his eating.
from someone who suffers constantly stress of a dog with behavioural issues, this is the absolute best care i’ve had for him hands down. i can’t thank the Esher team enough, especially his main handler chloe for the time and patience they give us
When we went back for our top up session, Orphy was super excited to drive through the gates and could not wait to get out of the car! We did about an hour with Charlie, going over techniques to keep Orphy interested and help us with her ongoing training while she’s at home. The refresher appointments are a nice touch and definitely worthwhile!
We absolutely recommend Royvon and are so grateful to have found them!
We want to say a huge thank you to Romeo, Kelsey, and the entire care team at Royvon. You took amazing care of Buddy, giving daily updates of his training sessions and group plays, which really helped to put our minds at ease. Buddy has built a lovely bond with Romeo and the team, and I’m sure he will look forward to any day plays there in the future.
Jasper was extremely reactive to just about everything, including people, dogs and traffic.
Through a lot of hard work, we have made so much progress with Romeo and Kelsey. They have really gone above and beyond to try and make him more manageable, and what a difference it’s made.
He is still reactive, mainly to dogs, but he can do so much more now. As with any German Shepherd puppy, we still have lots of work to do, but we believe we now have the tools to succeed thanks to Royvon.
We will still be coming back as Jasper has built a stone bond with both of his trainers, but we thoroughly recommend Royvon for anyone struggling with a difficult dog, or just a dog that needs training!
The choice of services available makes boarding here a seamless home away from home experience for our Labrador, Dune. The staff are friendly, welcoming and professional and our dog is always very well looked after. The daily updates and photos alongside Royvon's insta posts give us the confidence to leave our furry family member in their capable hands.
When we are away, we appreciate all the photos and comments about Dexter’s day! We are using you again next month! Thank you!
Dogs and their owners get a warm, professional welcome from Ioana &. Joanna, and our dog has a packed day being looked after by Leanne’s wonderful team of kind, experienced canine carers.
The whole team is a credit to Royvon’s owners, we feel lucky to have them as our trusted home from home for a special member of our family!
Richard, her evaluator, has been wonderful with her, gave us plenty of feed back and we had a report and lots of pictures as well. Our dog had clearly bonded with Richard already and we feel much happier about leaving her for longer next time. Thank you for caring for Jumika as well as you did, it really showed!
We were experiencing difficulties when walking both dogs on the lead and both had become protective, reactive and nervous of other people and sometimes dogs, making our walks difficult and stressful.
Well what can I say, the improvement we have seen in both dogs is brilliant, they are more confident and focused now and their reactivity levels have dropped significantly. We have some additional 1:1 training sessions to complete over the next few weeks to ensure that we can keep up the training.
During the training programme, Romeo and Kelsey sent us video updates of the dog’s progress, enabling us to see how they were getting on and responding to the training. This was invaluable to us.
In addition, the team at Royvon took really good care of both dogs and we received reports on how they were settling in/getting on during their group playtime and time spent in kennels, plus daily photo updates.
I wouldn’t hesitate to board our dogs at Royvon again, we were very happy with the dogs care.
Thank you to Romeo, Kelsey and the rest of the team at Royvon!
What is Royvon?
For over 65 years, we have been helping anxious dogs and their owners to find the confidence to live happily together. Our training methods are based on the latest scientifically-backed studies and are always force-free and play-focused. We help dogs to feel good about making the right choices and look to their owners for reassurance and guidance when they aren’t sure.
Our boarding options are award-winning, including PIF Best Kennel 2023, with three sites to choose from so that you can find the right fit for your dog. Choose from our Surrey base amongst woodland, the wide green spaces of our country retreat by the Brecon Beacons, or our innovative Royvon Playhouse in South Wales where there is fun to be had whatever the weather.
All three of our secure sites have training and play paddocks, premium boarding spaces, a devoted care team who look after the dogs 24/7, and a specialist training team who work with dogs and their families to achieve life-changing results.
The most customised service, for the dogs that need it most
The aim of a successful Confidence Stay is to make progress. For some anxious dogs this may be the boost they need to feel comfortable coming to us for boarding or training in the future, for others it may take longer, with more stages before they reach that point. We don’t limit how many confidence stays a dog can experience before signing up to another service so that you can decide exactly what you would like to happen next.
We can also recommend nearby accommodation if you are coming from further away – our Esher site even has an AirBnb property next door – so that you know you can be on-hand immediately if your dog needs your reassurance. We can work with you to extend the hours that they are without you in a step-by-step approach over a weekend, a week or a number of visits.
Our Confidence Stay gives us the chance to get to know your dog, as well as them getting to know us. Every dog is different, anxious dogs even more so. The recommended next steps will be based on your dog and your own requirements. Some dogs are happy to come and stay for boarding straight off, some may need a further Confidence Stay, some may benefit from some training first. We will chat this through with you and help to build a plan that works with your goals. There is never any pressure to move ahead with the plan straight away, it’s all about what feels right for you and your dog.
At all three of our sites, we have expert trainers who work with anxious and reactive dogs to help them to overcome their fears and feel comfortable in a variety of situations and environments. All breeds, all personalities and all ages are welcome at Royvon. Our signature residential Behaviour Modification Training Programme has helped countless dogs to handle everything from traffic to food guarding, dog-to-dog aggression to territorial issues at home. Royvon also offers non-residential training blocks so if staying away from home is an issue, you can still get the help you need.