When we first brought Gus home, he had really bad
separation anxiety, and unfortunately, we had to board him THREE times in the first 4mths that we had him!
We did kennels and we did in-home boarding. Both places though, he had been going for daycare everyday already so he was pretty familiar with the people.
The kennel boarding. The dogs are kept in large runs with fencing. They say that if your dog is able to climb fencing, then they have different runs with smaller fence holes. They are kept side by side, so they can technically see the dogs beside them, but the bottom half is not fence. Not sure what it was, but it's just to prevent them from getting at each other i guess? If the dogs aren't supervised, then they're kept in their runs for safety. Twice a day, they have a group play session. But the packages varied. We just chose 2 group play sessions for him.
The in-home boarding. He was there for 4 days, 3 nights. Always supervised, and always with other dogs. BUT not supervised at night during bedtime, and not separated from other dogs either. I wasn't too crazy about this. Although you had the option of bringing your own kennel. At the time, gus also had severe crate
anxiety. He was fine the first 2 nights. but on the last night, i don't know if he just got bored, or his
anxiety got the best of him, but he chewed up some things and threw up some plastic the next day. And apparently, guarded his food and some toys from the other dogs. I had warned them about this previously already of course.
Sooooo, i'm not sure if i have any suggestions exactly haha. Because now, we leave Gus at home, and have family members take turns living at our place, and having our dog walker come everyday to tire him out. We find that his
anxiety is lowest when he gets to stay at home.
If he does have
anxiety though, part of me would lean towards kennels simply because it is safer than in-home boarding because it is more structured. It sounds cruel to just let him be anxious and cry it out, but at the same time, i think Gus was "safer" this way because he couldn't get into fights if someone wasn't around to supervise, and he couldn't destroy anything. Both of these were common things for him if he were anxious.
Sorry if this wasn't much help. But that was my experience with boarding my
separation anxious pup haha. Everytime, he would come home just a LITTLE bit more wild than usual haha. But i guess that is what happens when he doesn't get regular training exercises for a whole week
Good luck! And great idea doing a trial run before you go! It lets him and the staff get to know each other a little bit before you actually go away.
I would tire Orion out as much as possible before you leave him, and don't make it a big deal when you leave either. Hand over the leash and leave. When owners stay and talk to their dog "Oh, fluffy we're coming back, don't worry, etc etc." <- I've found the dogs are more stressed out. They don't understand us and then their instinct tells them to follow you. Just my two cents from the other side of the counter