Miss Emily’s Bed & Biscuit: East Colonial’s 94-Point Pet Institution
No. 2 for pet groomers and boarding in Orlando with a Net Score of 94.2 — the highest in East Orlando. Inside Miss Emily's: 5,600 square feet, dog suites and three-level cat condos.
3 minute read
Every neighborhood has a business that other residents recommend without being asked. On East Colonial Drive, for anyone with a dog or a cat, it is Miss Emily’s Bed & Biscuit — at 5307 E Colonial Dr, ranked No. 2 in our Best Pet Groomers & Boarding in Orlando rankings with a Net Score of 94.2, the highest score of any business in East Orlando‘s rankings. The category’s overall winner is profiled in our winner feature; Miss Emily’s is the east side’s champion, and it has been building that reputation for a very long time.
A 27-year institution, new owners, same name
Miss Emily’s has been a trusted name in Orlando pet care for over 27 years, per a 2025 OrlandoVoyager interview with its current owners, who purchased the business in July 2022 and describe themselves as privileged to continue its legacy. That combination — a long-standing operation with owners who came from veterinary care, shelter work and animal services — is the profile of a boarding facility that treats the work as a profession rather than a side hustle. Boarding, doggy daycare and cat boarding are the core services, with grooming in the mix that our grooming-and-boarding rankings measure.
The facility, in specifics
The business’s own description puts numbers on the comfort: 5,600 square feet of indoor, secured, air-conditioned space, including a spacious play area; individual dog suites designed to reduce stress; three-level cat condos with a window view; and a secured fenced outdoor play area for fresh air and exercise. The cats-in-condos detail matters more than it might seem — plenty of boarding operations treat cats as an afterthought in a back room. Here the feline housing is a designed feature with its own selling point: a window.
The practical fine print
Miss Emily’s publishes its vaccination requirements plainly, and first-timers should read them before booking: dogs need rabies, DHLPP and Bordetella; cats need rabies, FVRCP and FeLV (listed as FLVV or FeLV on its site). That transparency is part of the ranking story — a facility that states its health rules up front is a facility that enforces them for everyone’s animals. Call ahead for boarding around holidays and UCF’s academic calendar peaks; east-side demand for pet care spikes exactly when the university’s families travel.
Daycare: the weekday engine
Boarding gets the name on the sign, but daycare is the service the neighborhood uses weekly. The model at Miss Emily’s pairs the indoor play area with the secured outdoor yard — dogs get structured social time and fresh air in a facility built for it, rather than a converted warehouse with a mop bucket in the corner. For east-side households, that turns the Colonial Drive address into part of the weekly commute geometry: drop off on the way to the Research Park or downtown, pick up a tired dog on the way home. It is also the smart way to audition the place — a dog that has spent happy daycare days in the building boards there later with the stress already engineered out, which is precisely what those individual suites are designed to protect.
How to judge a boarder, using Miss Emily’s as the template
Our rankings reward outcomes, but the inputs are visible to anyone who looks. Judge a boarding facility the way this one invites judgment: individual sleeping spaces rather than wall-to-wall crates; climate-controlled indoor square footage stated in numbers, not adjectives; separate, purpose-built housing for cats; outdoor play that is fenced and secured; vaccination rules published before you book, not discovered at drop-off; and a track record measured in decades. Miss Emily’s checks every one of those boxes in its own public materials, which is how a pet business on a busy commercial corridor holds a 94.2 Net Score and a No. 2 ranking in a city full of newer, shinier competitors.
Why it anchors the area
East Orlando’s rankings are dominated by places that feed students. Miss Emily’s serves the other East Orlando — the settled, pet-owning subdivisions behind the corridors, the Research Park families, the East Colonial regulars. It is the clearest proof in our data that this portal is a place people live, not just a place people study. Find it on the Top Spots Map, and see the full local picture in our East Orlando guide.
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