An online booking system for a Dartmoor dog field

What the site is

Mutts on the Moor is a secure dog exercise field in South Brent on the edge of Dartmoor, offering private, fenced sessions for dog owners. Customers book exclusive time slots online, pay via Stripe, and receive a gate code upon payment. The site handles the entire booking and payment workflow from start to finish.

The challenge

Nobody makes a dog-field booking plugin. But an established off-the-shelf booking plugin already did about 80% of the job — Stripe payments, user accounts, payment history, booking management — all battle-tested by thousands of other sites. The right engineering call was not to rebuild any of that from scratch: it was the most cost-effective and fastest route, and the client’s money went on the 20% that actually makes it a dog field. The system needed customers to pick a time slot, say how many dogs, pay online, and automatically receive an access code — with no manual intervention. The original site was hosted on IONOS, which proved unreliable, requiring a migration to SiteGround mid-project. The booking system also threw up real-world edge cases that had to be solved as they came up: double payments, invisible reserved slots, partial payments, caching conflicts with the booking calendar, and Stripe payment disputes.

What I built

Heavily customised booking system. Took the off-the-shelf plugin and reworked it with custom PHP into a dog field booking platform: time slots, number of dogs, a fresh gate code generated for every booking, and automated emails delivering those codes the moment payment clears.

Hosting migration. Moved the site from IONOS to SiteGround, including DNS, email, SSL and all associated configuration, with no downtime.

Payment debugging. Resolved complex Stripe integration issues including double payments, fraudulent chargeback disputes, invisible reserved slots (where unpaid bookings blocked availability), and partial payment errors.

Feature development. A testimonials page, gallery, Instagram integration, and an XL Bully booking policy with terms acknowledgement.

Design. Full design and build from scratch, creating a friendly, approachable brand that matches the business’s personality.

Why it matters

The field is a working business taking real money every day, so the feedback loop is short — every edge case in the wild gets a fix quickly. That experience is what I bring to every payment system I build.

The field itself

Just over an acre, 6ft+ secure fencing, a pond, a sand pit, tyre tunnels and a shelter — booked out exclusively, one group at a time.