The Dog Business

Types of dog businesses

• Dog breeding
• Dog food and treat manufacturing
• Pet photography
• Kennels
• Dog toys
• Pet spa and massage therapist
• Dog grooming
• Dog training
• Canine behaviourist
• Financial products
• Accessorizing, leads, collars, harnesses and coats
• Pet clothing designer
• Dog blogger
• Bandana maker
• Bed/housing designer
• Dog café operator
• Custom pet portrait artist/illustrator
• Pet costume designer
• Home boarding
• Day-care Commercial day-care
• Dog walking Pet sitting Home visits

What is home boarding?
Home boarding is defined as the carrying on of a business at a premises of any nature (including a private dwelling) of providing accommodation for other people’s dogs. It covers boarding overnight and as well as day crèche facilities.

What is day-care?
Doggy day-care can best be defined as a short-term day-time care for dogs. Usually, dogs stay for the day (such as the duration of their owner’s work day), being dropped off in the morning and collected at night, although care of just a few hours at a time may also be offered.

Doggy day-care is either offered as an extension of home boarding in a domestic setting or as a stand-alone commercial operation.

Commercial doggy daycare does not usually provide overnight boarding facilities as the focus of the centre is solely on play, activity, exercise, and keeping the dogs entertained, rather than simply providing accommodation. Some day-care facilities also offer behavioural and regular training as well as grooming and spa services.

Doggy day-care generally offers a range of different play environments for dogs, including an outdoor play area, a quieter, sensory zone (for example), inside toys and playgrounds, and often, expensive and well thought out facilities to keep dogs of all sorts entertained! While steps will be taken by the staff to account for nervous dogs or dogs that do not get on well with others, generally, only sociable and fairly outgoing dogs will really thrive in the doggy day-care environment. Dogs that do not get on well with other dogs or that are particularly nervous will generally be rather unhappy and most likely will not pass an initial screening check.

Doggy daycare is essentially a pet sitting service, and generally speaking, the provider offering the facility will have their own specially equipped premises to provide it. Multiple dogs will be present on the premises at once, and it is not a one-to-one service. However, the ratio of staff to dogs should be sufficient to ensure that all of the dogs there are kept safely entertained and looked after.

A few day-care centres have been successful in getting a 2nd licence to enable overnight ‘boarding’ as distinct to ‘kennels’.