It can feel like bureaucracy, being asked to write down what you wrote down last time for people who have fed your dog before. It is actually the facility showing its working. Feeding is the task boarding staff perform most often, for the most dogs, under the most time pressure, and the written note is how a good kennel makes that task survive its own rota.
Staff Rotate, and Memory Does Not Hand Over
The person who checked your dog in may not feed him or her that evening, and the weekend team may never have met either of you. Verbal instructions decay at every handover; a written note on the dog's own record reads identically at seven in the morning and seven at night, to staff who know the dog well and to staff covering a colleague's shift.
Months between stays widen the gap. A facility holding hundreds of dogs across a season cannot honestly promise that anyone remembers your dog's portion from spring when autumn arrives. Asking every client, every stay, removes the pretence and replaces it with a system that treats each dog's current instructions as the only ones that count.
Diets Change Between Stays
Your dog's feeding may have changed since the last visit: a new food, a different amount after a weight check, a treat withdrawn after a stomach upset, a medicine now hidden in one meal. The facility cannot know any of that unless this stay's note says it, and an old instruction followed faithfully is still the wrong meal.
Fresh confirmation also puts the responsibility where it belongs. If you confirm in writing, the facility can follow your note exactly and show that it did. If a feeding question ever became a dispute, about an allergic ingredient given or a portion doubled, the dated note from this stay is the document both sides would reach for. Liability sounds cold, but it is the same instinct as accuracy, written down.
How Detailed the Note Should Be
Write it as if the reader has never fed your dog, because one shift, they will not have. Name the food precisely. Give the exact amount per meal in the measure the facility will use, and say whether that measure is level or heaped if your home measure is generous. State the feeding times as your dog expects them, and note how the food is served if it matters: soaked, warmed, split into two bowls, or fed away from other dogs.
Cover treats as a rule, not a hope: which treats are allowed, how many, or none at all. List anything that must never be fed, allergies first, then the foods you exclude for health or training reasons, in unmistakable words. Finish with who to call with questions, with a number that will actually be answered during the stay, because a note that raises a question nobody can resolve gets improvised around.
Attach the note to this stay, date it, and expect to write its successor next time; the repetition is the protection. If your dog boards several times a year, keep your own master copy at home and treat each stay's note as an update of it, changing only what has genuinely changed, so the facility receives a fresh confirmation that still matches the version you would give a sitter or a family member feeding at home.
The note travels best inside the same packet as vaccination proof, and Pet Passport on KinsLe holds both together for the handover at reception.