A man calls a clinic with in-house boarding on a Thursday and asks whether they have room for his dog the week of the twentieth. The receptionist checks the calendar, sees an opening, and says yes. She takes his name and the dates, writes it on the boarding sheet, and hangs up. The call lasts under two minutes and feels like a win.
It is not a booking. It is a placeholder with a name on it. Nobody asked what the dog weighs, so nobody knows whether he fits in the run that was open. Nobody asked about medication, so the kennel tech planning the twentieth has no idea there is twice-daily insulin involved. Nobody looked at the vaccine record, so the expired rabies certificate surfaces at the counter on drop-off morning with a family already loaded into the car.
Every one of those problems was answerable on the original call. This article covers the question set that turns a boarding inquiry into a reservation staff can actually work from, and the order to ask it in, so the fields that matter get captured before the caller hangs up rather than reconstructed later.
One boundary applies throughout. Everything below is front desk workflow. Which vaccines a facility requires, what medications staff will administer, and what care can be authorized in an emergency are decisions the practice's veterinarians and owners make. The front desk's job is to collect the information those policies depend on, consistently, on the first call.
Answer the capacity question first, then keep the caller on the line
The caller has one question in mind and it is not on your intake form. It is whether you have room on their dates. Until they hear an answer, they are not really listening to anything else.
So answer it first, or say plainly what you can. "I have space that week, let me get the details so I can hold it" gives the caller permission to settle into a longer conversation. "Let me take some information and I will check" reverses the order and loses people, because a caller working down a list of kennels will keep dialing while you gather.
If the calendar genuinely cannot be checked in the moment, say so and still take the full intake. A complete record means the callback is a confirmation rather than a fresh start.
Owner and pet basics, including the ones that get skipped
The obvious fields are obvious. Full name, mobile number, email, and whether they have been to the practice before. An existing client record fills in most of what follows without asking.
The fields that get skipped under pressure are the ones about the animal itself.
- Species, breed, and age. Straightforward, and worth saying back to confirm.
- Weight. This is the one that determines whether the open run is actually the right run. A rough owner estimate is fine at inquiry stage. "Around eighty pounds" and "around fifteen" route to different housing.
- Spay or neuter status. Many facilities house intact animals differently, and finding out at drop-off is finding out too late.
- Whether more than one pet is coming, and whether they share housing. Two dogs from one household may be able to share a run, which changes the capacity math. Ask rather than assume in either direction.
Say the pet's name back and use it for the rest of the call. It is a small thing and it makes the intake feel like a conversation instead of a form.
Exact dates and times, not approximate ones
"The week of the twentieth" is not a reservation. Drop-off date, drop-off time, pickup date, pickup time. All four.
Vagueness here creates two specific problems. The first is billing disputes, because a facility that charges by night needs both ends of the stay agreed in advance and stated back to the caller. The second is drop-off congestion. Peak mornings compress into a narrow window, and a kennel that has not asked what time people are arriving will discover the answer as a line in the lobby.
Ask about the travel behind the dates too. A caller flying out has a hard deadline at drop-off and often a delayed and uncertain return. Knowing a pickup may slip because of a connecting flight is worth capturing at booking, not learning about from a voicemail on the day.
Feeding: what they bring, how much, and how often
Feeding is the field most likely to be captured as a single word when it needs three.
Ask whether the owner is bringing food. Many facilities prefer or require it, particularly for animals that do not tolerate an abrupt diet change, and the caller needs to hear that policy while they are still planning rather than the morning they pack the car.
Then ask how much and how often, in the owner's own units. "Two cups, morning and night" is usable. "Regular amount" is not. If the food needs preparation, soaking, warming, mixing in a topper, capture that too. Also worth asking: any treats allowed, any foods to avoid, and whether the animal has a history of resource guarding around food, since that changes how staff handle mealtimes and where the animal eats.
Record it verbatim and read it back. Feeding instructions are the ones owners are most likely to correct when they hear them repeated.
Hear it handled live. Answara's own AI receptionist answers our main line. Call (857) ANSWARA and ask it whatever a customer would ask you, or see plans and get set up.
Medications, one at a time
Do not ask "is he on any medications?" and write down whatever comes back as a single line. Ask what medications, then work through each one.
For every medication: the name, the dose, the form, the timing, and whether it needs to be given with food. Then ask two follow-ups that owners rarely volunteer. Is the animal cooperative about taking it, and how does the owner normally get it into them. A cat that takes a pill in a pill pocket without incident and a cat that requires two people are the same line on a chart and very different mornings for the kennel staff.
Ask whether the owner is supplying the medication and whether they will bring enough for the full stay plus a buffer in case pickup slips. Ask about refrigeration. Insulin, some liquid antibiotics, and various eye preparations have storage requirements, and the kennel needs to plan for it rather than discover it at the counter.
Flag anything that involves injection, controlled substances, or a schedule that falls outside normal staffed hours to a technician or veterinarian before the reservation is confirmed. That is a clinical staffing question, not a front desk one, and the answer may be that the stay needs to be structured differently.
Vaccination status, checked at inquiry rather than at drop-off
Vaccine requirements vary by facility, and this article is not the place to state what yours should be. What is universal is the timing failure: the requirement gets checked at drop-off instead of at booking, and the resulting problem lands on the worst possible morning.
For an existing client, the record is in the building. Pull it while the caller is on the line and check two things, not one. Whether the required vaccines are current today, and whether any of them lapse before the boarding dates end. A certificate that expires mid-stay is still a gap, and it is invisible if you only check today's date.
For a new client, capture the previous clinic's name and phone number so records can be requested that week, and mark the reservation as pending verification rather than confirmed.
Then flag the timing issue where it applies. Some vaccines your practice requires may need to be given a set number of days before the stay, which means a caller booking for next week could need an appointment this week. That connection only gets made if the check happens at inquiry. Made early, it is a routine appointment. Made at drop-off, it is a family missing a flight.
Clinics with in-house boarding have a real advantage here and often do not use it. The medical record is down the hall. Look at it during the call.
Emergency contact and authorization
This is the section people rush past because it is uncomfortable, and it is the one that matters most on the rare occasion it is needed.
Capture the owner's contact number while traveling, which is frequently not the number they normally use. Capture a local backup contact who can be reached if the owner cannot be, along with that person's relationship to them. Capture exactly who is authorized to pick the animal up, by name, because "my brother might get him" is not something the desk can act on when the brother appears.
Then capture the practice's authorization fields as your veterinarians have defined them: who may approve care if the owner is unreachable, and any spending threshold the owner sets in advance. Read the answers back and note the date they were given.
Behavioral and medical flags belong here too. Reactivity toward other dogs, resource guarding, escape history, seizure history, anxiety in kennels, a cat that must not be housed near dogs. These change housing assignments and handling, and they need to reach the kennel staff rather than sitting in a note nobody opens.
The problem is consistency, not knowledge
None of this is specialized. Any experienced boarding coordinator asks these questions without thinking about it.
The difficulty is that boarding inquiries arrive during the same hours as everything else, they take several minutes each, and they cluster into the weeks before major holidays when the front desk is already absorbing a heavier medical schedule. Under that load, intake quality starts depending on who picked up the phone and how loud the lobby was. The fields that fall off are always the same ones: the second half of the medication question, the pickup time, the local emergency contact.
Two structural fixes help. Make the fields required in whatever system holds the reservation, so an incomplete record cannot be saved. And put the question set in printed form at every phone, in the order above, so nobody is reconstructing it from memory during a rush.
Consistent phone coverage is the other half. Answara answers inbound boarding inquiries and runs the same intake every time, at eleven in the morning or at ten at night when someone books a flight and immediately thinks about the dog. It captures dates, pet details, feeding, medications, behavioral flags, and owner-reported vaccine status marked for staff verification, then hands the practice a complete record to confirm. It does not make clinical decisions and it does not approve anything. It makes sure the questions get asked. More on the front-desk workflow is in our veterinary resources.
FAQ
Should a boarding reservation be confirmed on the first call? That depends on your policy for deposits and vaccine verification. A common approach is to hold the dates on the call and confirm once records are verified, which gives the caller a reason to stop shopping while protecting the facility from a compliance surprise at drop-off.
What if the caller does not know their pet's vaccine history? Record what they do know, take the previous clinic's name and number, and mark the reservation pending verification. Request the records that week. The point is to resolve it before drop-off morning rather than at the counter.
How do we handle medication questions the front desk cannot answer? Capture the details and route them to a technician or veterinarian before confirming. Anything involving injections, controlled substances, or dosing outside staffed hours is a clinical staffing decision, and the desk should not be the one making it.
Is it worth taking a full intake for a caller who is only price shopping? Usually yes, at least through pet details and dates. It costs a few minutes, and it means that if they call back a week later, the record already exists and the conversation starts from a much better place.