Activities
Our furry guests enjoy a holiday agenda full of entertaining activities. These include treat hunting in our Sensory Garden, freedom exploring at a private dog park, daily exploratory forest walks, brain enrichment games and an endless supply of massages, cuddles and love.
Sensory Garden
Our sensory garden has been lovingly designed with Cavalier King Charles Spaniels in mind. It features a calming hanging day bed that gently sways in the breeze, perfect for relaxed lounging and watching the world go by. The garden is filled with dog-friendly plants and beautifully aromatic herbs, creating a space that’s as enriching as it is peaceful.
Underpaw, there’s plenty to explore. Cavaliers can wander across a variety of textures, including different shapes and sizes of paving stones, smooth pebbles, bark, and natural dirt — a sensory playground that curious paws adore.
We love keeping things fresh and exciting for our guests. For special occasions like birthdays, Halloween, and Christmas, the sensory garden gets a festive makeover. We also refresh the space with new plants and herbs each season so there’s always something new to sniff and discover.
This magical space is also where we host our much-loved Sniffaris (treat hunts). Tasty treats are hidden throughout the garden, aromatic herbs are sprinkled around, and our furry guests are encouraged to sniff, search, and hunt to their heart’s content. It’s enriching, confidence-boosting, and ridiculously fun.
Private Dog Park
One of our guests’ favourite adventures is a visit to a private dog park. This fully fenced space allows your dog to run, explore, and play safely off-lead in a peaceful natural setting. Surrounded by towering trees, the park features a concrete tunnel, a wooden A-frame, lounging platforms, stone blocks for relaxing, and plenty of open grass for joyful zoomies. Dog-friendly plants throughout the park invite endless sniffing and exploration.
During our visits, we enjoy gentle games of fetch, fun treat hunts, and relaxed downtime. We often lay out a cosy blanket on the grass, where our furry guests can soak up the scenery while enjoying cuddles and soothing massages.
Why a Private Dog Park?
Private dog parks offer dogs the freedom to move and play without the restrictions of a lead or small backyard. New sights, sounds, and scents provide valuable mental stimulation while supporting physical wellbeing.
For peace of mind, we only visit this private dog park and never attend public dog parks. At all times, your dog is closely supervised by a minimum of two (and usually three) dedicated members of The Dog Cottage team.
Enrichment Games
Dog enrichment involves thoughtfully designed activities that stimulate both the mind and body, allowing dogs to engage their senses — taste, sound, touch, and smell — while expressing natural behaviours such as sniffing, problem-solving, exploring, and social interaction.
We absolutely love enrichment games for two simple reasons. First, our guests genuinely adore them. Watching dogs light up with excitement while knowing the activities are doing them so much good is our favourite kind of joy. Second, research consistently shows that enrichment offers incredible benefits, including reduced stress and anxiety, increased relaxation, improved confidence and resilience, stronger human–dog bonds, and the prevention or improvement of unwanted behaviours.
At The Dog Cottage, we incorporate a wide variety of enrichment styles to suit every dog’s needs and preferences. These include cognitive and behavioural enrichment, environmental enrichment, feeding enrichment, musical enrichment, scent enrichment, and social enrichment — all carefully woven into your dog’s daily routine.
Daily Explorative Walks
Each day, your dog enjoys a gentle, explorative nature walk along our extensive network of more than 14 kilometres of scenic tracks. With a variety of sniff-worthy routes to choose from, no two walks are ever the same. One of our guests’ favourites winds through the forest behind the cottage, where dogs delight in the sounds and scents of local wildlife — including kangaroos, geckos, and a rich array of birdlife. Along the way, they also enjoy tranquil water views and the occasional glimpse of birds and flying fish.
These daily explorative walks offer far more than just fresh air. They help maintain muscle tone and joint mobility, support cardiovascular health, release excess energy, lower stress levels, and promote overall wellbeing.
For Dogs Who Prefer a Slower Pace
If your dog doesn’t enjoy longer walks, or is limited by age or a health condition, that’s absolutely okay. They can still be included in our daily outings from the comfort and safety of one of our dog prams, ensuring every guest enjoys the sights, sounds, and scents at their own pace.Learn more
Grooming
Each day after our walk, our furry guests enjoy a gentle and deeply relaxing grooming ritual. We begin by playing calming dog music from The Pawsome Rescues YouTube channel to set a peaceful mood. If they haven’t already settled in themselves, your Cavalier is gently lifted onto the plush faux fur atop the sofa, where their grooming experience begins.
Our Grooming Routine
Our routine starts with a soft eye cleanse and gentle ear wipe, followed by a full-body tick check to ensure no unwelcome visitors joined us on our walk. Next, we use a soft-bristle brush for a slow, full-body groom, helping your Cavalier relax while loosening the coat and identifying any areas that may need extra attention. Any knots are then carefully untangled using combs, before the session finishes with a soothing massage. More often than not, this results in your Cavalier drifting off into a blissful nap.
Please note: If a guest gets a little too friendly with the mud during playtime at the private dog park, they’ll be treated to a relaxing bath using our gentle oatmeal shampoo and conditioner — because even muddy adventures should end in comfort.
Cuddles, Massages & Love
This part is by far the biggest perk of our job. The cuddles, massages and love is endless at The Dog Cottage.
Morning cuddles - Each of our furry guests start their day with individual cuddles and snuggles in bed. This is one of the favourite parts of our day.
More cuddles and snuggles are given before and after their grooming session.
Evening cuddles - Each day draws to a close with bedtime cuddles again. A lot of our guests enjoy drifting off to sleep while being gently stroked.
Resident Nana and Grandad - Our furry guests absolutely love the daily visit from our resident Cavalier-obsessed Nana and Grandad. They enjoy one-on-one cuddles and massages sometimes on the rocking chair, other times on the sofa.
We understand that some Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are not huge fans of cuddles. In which case we restrain ourselves and wait for the Cavalier to decide they feel like cuddles.