Barks & Recreation Information

Barks & Recreation is a professional dog walking and grooming service in Preston, Lancashire that also provides support to people to benefit their physical health, mental wellbeing and social confidence. Our purpose is simply to improve the welfare of dogs in the local area and the lives of the people who use our service. We do this by operating an affordable but quality dog walking and grooming service but unlike other services we provide opportunities for people to improve social skills, physical health and mental wellbeing by supporting them to walk or assist with the grooming of dogs. Barks & Recreation specialises in the support of people who have a learning disability or are on the autistic spectrum. People who use the service are taught around various aspects of dog welfare and are also able to access training and qualifications, with a view to possible paid employment opportunities. Barks & Recreation was founded by Stephen Brown, combining his life-long love for dogs with his professional passion in health and social care. Stephen has many years experience working in health and social care. He spent over seven years at a Preston charity that provides support to adults who have a learning disability where he set-up and ran a successful outreach service, established the popular Kolor Bar social evening and helped develop the Preston learning disability football team. As a professional dog service we are fully insured to undertake our work with dogs and to provide training to the people using the service. We are DBS (formerly CRB) cleared and have a certificate in dog first aid. All our dog grooming is performed by a City & Guilds Level 3 accredited dog groomer.