How To Start Up a Doggy Day Care Business

You have dogs, you love dogs, and you are great with dogs: everyone tells you so. You would be a natural at doggy day care, the perfect stay-at-home business for a dog lover. You can absolutely envision yourself surrounded by wagging dogs of all shapes and sizes, playing happily in your fenced back yard, or lazing peacefully on the patio while you sip iced tea and maybe enjoy a little light gardening. Snap those fingers and wake up -- what’s involved in getting started running a successful home-based dog care business?



First Things First

Have you ever owned your own business? Do you have any experience in being self-employed? Perhaps you worked in a family business or even had a paper route as a kid? Working for yourself has some real pros and cons and taking a sober look at your personality, lifestyle and especially your thoughts and feelings about taking risks, is an excellent place to start.



Next, assess your resources. Take a cold hard look at the community where you live: do you have sufficiently affluent clientele? Dog owners are everywhere, but not every community has the same general attitude towards dog ownership and care. As with every business, it pays to do some market research. Among the things you will want to find out:



• Are there any doggy day care businesses in your area?

• Are they full? If so, are they only full during certain seasons or all year round?

• What kind of hours do they offer?

• What do they charge?



Now crunch some numbers yourself:

• How many dogs would you need at a competitive rate in order to operate in the black?

• What about your home and yard?

• Do you have adequate fencing? Do you have a clean and efficient way to manage dog waste?

• Do you have separate rooms in your house with doors that close in case you need to separate animals?

• Are your floors that are easy to clean?

• Do you have available cash on hand in case you need to make changes to your house and/or yard to make them more dog friendly, safe or appealing to the public?









As With Everything, There are Some Downsides

Besides the expected downsides of running a business from your home, including never really being able to "go home," starting up a doggy daycare in your personal ground zero may well have a few downsides or unwanted impacts upon your life.



For example:

You will be required to comply with state and local laws, statutes and

regulations governing the dog daycare industry before you will be allowed to

open shop. Some locales are more bureaucratic than others, so just how much red tape you will have to cut through is an open question, but if you hate paperwork be forewarned: during start up you could be facing stacks of forms, including obtaining licenses and incurring fees.



Your Personality and Other Considerations

You’ll be dealing with the general public a lot. Be ready for people who don’t do what they say they will, don’t pay on time, don’t represent themselves or their dogs accurately, and so on. People can be much more difficult to deal with than dogs!



You will have to spend a certain percentage of your time performing tasks that are not dog related. Among them bookkeeping, marketing, designing business cards, keeping a web and/or social media presence or hiring additional staff will take up your time. The more things you can do yourself, the more you can keep your costs down. But if your strength is in dealing with the dogs, you may find that you dislike or resent all the tasks that take you away from the pooches.



You will need to develop a good relationship with a local veterinarian so that you have someone "on call" in the event of an emergency. You will have to be clear and strict in setting up safety rules and insisting that they are followed to prevent fights, diseases or accidents. One important rule will involve limiting the number of dogs you have in your care at any given time. Be ready for that day that you are at full capacity and a customer begs you for an emergency "just this once" bending of your rules to accommodate him or her. If you don’t enjoy saying no to people at least some of the time, gird your loins – at least sometimes it will be necessary.



Despite the possible pitfalls and challenges, doggy care can’t be beat for convenience and pure canine delight. A valuable service, dog owners will be grateful to you and building a loyal clientele shouldn’t be too difficult. And what could be better than spending your days having the dogs come to you!



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