Do I Have to Do an Evaluation?

20+ years ago when The Dog Gurus were starting their own dog daycare businesses, other pet industry professionals were resistant to the idea. Kennel operators at that time thought off-leash play was risky. The idea of bringing dogs together from different families and letting them intermingle and play was considered dangerous. It simply wasn’t done! 20 years ago you would rarely find any kennel owner willing to do daycare. And you know, there is some wisdom in remembering the warnings from days gone by. Daycare can be risky. Dogs can get injured (and even killed). So how do you minimize that risk? One major risk avoidance strategy is by conducting a formal evaluation process on every dog that goes into a playgroup.

One of the primary goals of any dog daycare is to keep play safe for all the dogs. That starts with making sure you have the right dogs in your center. I feel so strongly about this that I consider a daycare negligent if it does not require a formal process to evaluate the dogs. An evaluation is the first step to ensuring the safety of all the dogs in your care.

An evaluation process should involve gathering information about the potential daycare dog to identify any red flags (problem areas) before the dog even gets to your center; introducing the dog one at a time to a small group (less than 8) of dogs in daycare; and then managing the playgroups to determine the new dog’s playstyle and most suitable playmates. If your center has larger playgroups, then an additional step should be included to introduce the new dog to a larger group of dogs since some dogs that do well in groups of 8 or less will not do well in a group of 15 or more.

On average, daycare evaluations take 10-30 minutes depending on the process you use, the experience of the evaluator, and who is involved. If dog owners are included in the daycare evaluation you can expect it to take longer since you’ll want to take time to explain the process to the pet parent as you go through it. Consider the time spent as an investment into a safe and fun day for the dogs and critical to setting yourself apart from your competition.

If you are doing daylong play and need to update your evaluation process, we can help! Be sure to check out our “done for you forms” in the Dog Management Tools pdf.

• Off leash play application
• Dog evaluation checklist and instructions
• Client feedback form

If you need to establish your evaluation process or just want a new staff member to understand what should happen during an evaluation, sign up for our Dog Evaluations Online Course.

But what if you don’t do daylong daycare? What if you just put small groups of dogs together for short play sessions as an add on service? I don’t think smaller or shorter play sessions negate the need for a formal evaluation process. It’s still important to evaluate whether or not a dog will enjoy off leash play, determine his playstyle, and examine if he is the right candidate to be put with other dogs. However, I do recognize that a lengthy, time consuming evaluation process may not be cost effective if you are doing shorter sessions.

You may find yourself taking shortcuts and speeding up the evaluations process. While this is understandable, you also have to understand that with a less stringent evaluation process you are accepting more risk that a fight or injury may happen. For this reason, we would also recommend accepting primarily green dogs in a playgroup session and not as many yellow dogs as you might accept in daylong play. Facility operators will need to determine their level of comfort with that increased risk.