How we check

Checked by Cleo & Bonnie

A venue gets the mark only when we've checked it ourselves: on a visit with the dogs, by phone, or with the owner. The date and the way we checked go next to it. A date is more honest than a badge, because rules change and places open and close.

The space rating comes from our two: Cleo-sized is room under the stool for a wire fox terrier; Bonnie-sized is room for a deerhound lurcher to stretch out.

Review coming soon

Cleo and Bonnie's review of a place, a line each and one from us, their pawrents, goes up only once we've checked the place ourselves, with the date. Until then its page says the review is coming, and shows what we found online.

Not checked yet

Until we've been, a venue's page shows what we found online instead: its own website first, then directories and blogs, each with the date it shows. It's listed because dogs are welcome. The date is there because details move.

Visitors say, and reports differ

When two or more people separately tell us the same thing about where dogs could go, from their own visits in the last year, a place shows Visitors say, with how many and when. When someone tells us dogs weren't allowed somewhere we list, it shows Reports differ until we've checked again. One report alone never changes a page. How reports work.

Money and the verdicts

Lewes Dogs is a hobby and makes no money. Listings are free, nobody pays for a review, and we don't take free things in return for one. If that ever changes, the place's page will say so first, and it will never change what the page says about dogs. Where we know a place in another way, its page says that too. The whole policy: reviews and what you send.

For venues

Run a place we list? Update your listing: your dog rules in your own words, and a photo or your logo if you'd like them on it. Not on the site yet? Suggest your place. Or email listings@lewesdogs.co.uk. We check before we change anything, and put the date on it once we have.

Work with us. We're trying out window stickers for places we list, for fun rather than money. Venues can ask about them, or about their listing, at listings@lewesdogs.co.uk or through Update your listing.

Not a venue? There's more you can send us, from a photo of your dog to how a visit went: join in.

Meet the reviewers

• Cleo

  Wire fox terrier, the big sister

  Small dog, main-character energy. Cleo rates a place from the floor up: the welcome, the rug, a spot under the table with a view of the door, and the water bowl (her beard drinks too).

  Her verdicts are short. “Approved” is high praise.

• Bonnie

  Deerhound lurcher, the puppy

  Growing at a rate the food bill can confirm. Bonnie rates a place by smell first, then by people, then by whether there's room for her legs.

  She takes after the sighthounds: a sprint outside, then a long nap by the fire.

• 

  The pawrents

  On the other end of the leads

  The humans, who've taken Cleo and Bonnie to every place on the site. Theirs is the practical line under the dogs': the food, the welcome, and what to know before you go in with a dog.