K9 Woodland Services – Wallaby Woods, Reading

K9 Woodland Services is a large wooded site with a bunch of different activities going on from a variety of different types of dog fields and pony paddocks to a doggy day care facility.

Each facility for dogs exercise is very different and so we have split the listings here into different pages to avoid confusion.

2 other fields at this site:

• Oak Park (2 acres, 4.5ft fence) (not 4 acres as on the website)
• Chapel Woods (4 acres, 4.5ft fence (not 8 acres as on the website)

Wallaby woods is 3 acres (not 4 acres) of mature woodland set up as a secure dog exercise area approximately 6 miles from central Reading.

Is Wallaby Woods Secure?

The honest answer to this question is that we don’t know. The fence is mostly around 6ft (allowing for undulations) but there is significant unrepaired damage in one area and much of the perimeter is completely inaccessible due to over grown brambles. Brambles are invasive and known to be key culprits when it comes to fence damage so we can only state that if you have escape artists or small dogs, you might want to consider keeping them on a lead here.

The entrance gate is a standard 1.8m high deer fence and the threshold is (at time of visit) flush with the ground so there is not realistic change of escape here.

Booking and Accessing Wallaby Woods

The booking system is relatively straight forward and sessions are one hour in duration with no buffer advertised so sessions run back to back.

Access to the site is easy – you pull off from the main road (use our What3Words Link or Google pin for the precise location) and you are instructed to use the intercom to enter. The gates were open on our last visit so this wasn’t required. You are also asked to arrive 10 minutes early for your first visit so you can be shown around.

What is Wallaby Woods Like?

This field is very disappointing. It’s rare we write reviews of this nature but in this case it is warranted. The last visit we made to this site was very soon after Wallaby Woods opened and we assumed many of the issues we found then were due to opening a bit too soon. However, we will list the issues we found here:

• Rubbish all over the woodland – from plastic bottles to bits of wire
• No method of securing the gate once inside
• A used bottle of ADBlue – this was either being used as a water container (which even if sterilised is not good practice) or discarded by a client and not removed
• Piles of unsecured logs
• Very dangerous standing deadwood – we referred this to our arborist who confirmed they posed significant danger to users (see images)
• Large amounts of Ragwort
• No terms and conditions to agree to
• No water to wash off paws (extremely important in woodland fields)
• 1 open bin

Not something I usually comment on but there was an unacceptable amount of dog waste including left in bags all around the walk ways. I can understand not being able to get knee-deep in brambles to collect a dog poo but I lost count of the ones old and new on the and very near the paths.

Woodlands are very popular with dog field users but they are significantly more complex to run. Whilst this field might on the face of it look lovely, it does not meet the basic health and safety standards we would expect from a dog field.

Media © British Dog Fields