1. Scotland to Somerset: where all 13 went > 13 new locations went live in September 2026, up from nine in our previous record month (November 2025), from Kelso in the Scottish Borders to Minehead on the Somerset coast.
2. Still Breaking New Ground: 6 venue types we’d never installed for before > even with 97 live sites to date, September brought 6 first-ever venue types
3. Behind the scenes: how 13 sites went live in a month > our site-readiness process and a dedicated team got all 13 machines live in a single month
4. More Businesses, More Venue Types: What a record September means for yours 
5. FAQs and related reading

13 different locations and no single corner of the country doing all the work. 

Is a dog wash a London thing? A countryside thing? A “must be a southern thing” thing? September says none of the above. In 30 days we went live in the Scottish Borders, a Somerset seaside town, a Northamptonshire field and a Stockton car wash, among others.

Want to see the whole network? Our locations page shows every live site.

Dogs get muddy everywhere in the UK, so the “where” turns out to be the easy part. The more interesting question is what kinds of businesses are saying yes … 

A map shows how far we went. It doesn’t show what we installed. These 13 sites weren’t 13 more of the same. We’re used to pubs, country parks and cafes. They’re brilliant sites, and we’ve written about them before (see pubs and country parks). You’d think with nearly 100 live sites nationwide, we’d have seen every kind of business there is. September proved otherwise: seven of the 13 were first of their kind sites, covering 6 first ever venue types. The others were new to their areas. Here they all are.

The firsts: 

• The tattoo studio (yes, really)

Hold Fast in Minehead is the first tattoo studio we’ve ever worked with, and it’s our favourite surprise of the month.

On paper, it’s an odd fit. A tattoo studio isn’t somewhere you’d expect to see a dog, and studios are hygiene-regulated by their local councils for good reason. So why would one want a dog wash?

Our read is that they spotted something simple. Their customers might not bring dogs inside, but dog owners are everywhere in a town like Minehead, and they walk past the door every day. The machine is positioned on the street where plenty of people can see it, and it has done really well since going live. [ADD: one concrete detail from Hold Fast if you have permission, e.g. a quote or “busy from the first weekend”.]

The lesson isn’t “tattoo studios should buy dog washes”. It’s that a business doesn’t have to be dog-friendly inside to serve dog owners outside.

• 2 car washes

K & K Hand Car Wash (Stockton-on-Tees) and Kelso Autoshine (Kelso) are our first live car wash sites. Car washes are already a place people go to clean something muddy, so a dog wash sits naturally beside the vacuum bays. We covered the thinking in Car Wash to Dog Wash. Now we can show it in practice.

• An equestrian yard

We’ve installed on farms before, but Oakley Stables in Scunthorpe is a dedicated equestrian site. [ADD: one or two facts about Oakley, e.g. livery, lessons, number of horses, dogs on the yard.] Anyone who has spent time around a yard knows that mud, horses and dogs go together.

• A bistro overlooking the 18th hole of a former golf course

Mount Pleasant View in Lower Stondon, Bedfordshire, is a relaxed dining and events venue, nestled between Shefford, Henlow and Hitchin. It looks out over the 18th hole of the former golf course, and it’s now a community-centred bistro and events venue: brunch and lunch, afternoon tea, evening meals, a famous Sunday roast, and private functions like weddings. It’s a family-friendly local landmark, and now it’s also somewhere you can wash the dog.

• And 2 more firsts

Dog trainers: Potter Paws, Aylesbury. An independent training school running small, friendly classes outdoors, from a puppy’s first weeks right through to adulthood. Outdoor training means muddy paws are part of the job, and a trainer’s customers are dog owners by definition. Now there’s somewhere to rinse off the mud on the way home.

A front-yard install on a busy residential street: Sud Shack, Hemel Hempstead. Here the dog wash is the business. The owner was able to put the machine on his own front yard, giving the whole neighbourhood easy access.

The rest of our 13 installs are types of business we’ve installed for before, but some are firsts for their area – and each one put us on the map somewhere new:

• Big City Dog, London: we have other dog grooming salons in our network, but this is our first in London.
• Montford Bridge Cafe, Shrewsbury: the first cafe in the West Midlands to install a machine with us.
• Wellington Country Park, Reading: now our most southerly country park.
• The Farmers Arms, Taunton
• The Great OutPaws, Richmond
• Foxholes Farm Dog Park, Northamptonshire

The big picture:

The pace of new venue types is as much of a story as the location count. Even at nearly 100 sites, there’s always a first. Travelling the length of the country is one thing. Doing it for 6 kinds of business we’d never installed for before – and still getting every one live – is a credit to our team. 

So how do you get 13 machines live in 30 days, in 13 different places, when 6 of those are kinds of businesses you’ve never installed for before?

• Step 1: site readiness. Every site has to tick the same 3 boxes: placement (where the machine goes and how people reach it), plumbing (water in, drainage out) and power. It’s the same 3 boxes whether the site is a country park or outside a tattoo studio, which is what having 97 live sites teaches you: the venue changes, the checklist doesn’t.

Before anything is installed, our team works with each partner so those boxes are ticked, and keeps in touch as the site gets ready. Across this many places and people, that’s a lot of conversations, and a huge hats off to them.

• Step 2: install day. Then it’s over to our dedicated Install team, who got all 13 machines live in a single month! That meant about 5,000 miles on the road (the round trips from our Bournemouth HQ to 13 sites, from Kelso in the Scottish Borders to Minehead on the Somerset coast), plenty of different sites, and plenty of hours of dedication from our team. So yes, when we said we beat the record “by a mile”, we weren’t being modest.

So when we say “record month”, it’s not only a network or sales number. It’s a lot of people doing a lot of unglamorous work well, in the office down at our Bournemouth headquarters, on the phones, and on the road, and a team that has done it enough times to make it look easy. That’s what you’re buying into when you become a partner: not just a machine, but a nationwide network’s worth of know-how in getting your site live.

Now for the part that matters if you run a business. Alongside the geographical spread, the firsts, and the team behind them – there’s a bigger story in the numbers.

Last November, we installed 9 machines. This September, we installed 13. That’s 44% more installs. And as you’ve just seen, they weren’t more of the same: 6 venue types we’d never installed for before.

That matters because it shows a dog wash machine isn’t a niche add-on for any one kind of business. When a tattoo studio, a car wash, a dog trainer, and golf course bistro all see the same opportunity, it suggests that more and more businesses see a self-service dog wash machine as what it is: a modern, revenue-generating addition to their site.

Here’s what more business owners they’re seeing:

• They keep the revenue: When a business leases or buys its machine, the income from every wash is theirs. The machine earns on its own, around the clock, without extra staff. That’s passive income, from an unused space on site that was already there.
• They stay in control: They choose the spot, set the price, and run the machine their way.
• It does more than earn: A dog wash shows customers that you welcome dog owners, that you’re modernising, and that you’re thinking about what people actually need day to day. 

So what does this mean if you run a business? If you take one thing from our record September, make it this: there isn’t a “dog wash type of business”.

From the Scottish Borders to the Somerset coast, what they share isn’t a type of business. It’s a simple fact: wherever there are dog owners, there’s a need. Our record month doesn’t just prove the demand is there – it shows the appetite for this growing market is spreading to every kind of business – and that dog owners’ need is being met more and more nationwide.

And the need is there. The UK is home to around 13 million dogs (Dogs Trust, University of Leeds and University of Exeter, 2025), and around 65% of their owners walk daily. That’s a lot of muddy paws, every day, looking for somewhere to clean up – and there’s no sign of that slowing down. No wonder more and more businesses are seeing the value of offering a dog wash machine.