Daycare Operational Standards
The Dog Gurus have been involved in the dog daycare industry for over 20 years. We started when people had no idea what daycare was or why a pet parent would want such a service and have seen it grow to a much larger part of most pet businesses. Take Robin’s daycare: She started her daycare as a 3-day a week venture that would help her generate more revenue for her dog training business. Within a year, she had to offer daycare 5 days a week; then had to hire more employees for daycare; then had to move to a larger location. What started out as a small idea, grew a life of it’s own. That has happened throughout this whole industry.
We’ve seen the good: Daycares helping families develop happier, healthier dogs by providing an energy outlet for the pet. Creative business owners finding a niche for just about any type of daycare. There are small centers and huge centers; indoor only facilities, and facilities with many acres outside. There are lots of options about how to operate your daycare.
But we’ve also seen the bad and the ugly: Business owners that open just to make a buck with little knowledge about how to safely care for dogs. Sadly, we’ve seen daycares that learn by practicing with dogs…only to find out the error of their ways when dogs get injured or even killed. This has got to stop!
With 20 years into this industry, there is no excuse for not gaining the knowledge you need to operate your business safely. There is a wide variety of educational resources available for dog daycare owners both online and at industry shows. There is a trade association (The International Boarding and Pet Services Association) to provide a voice for our industry. And in just a few weeks there will be a Professional Animal Care Certification available. Things are definitely moving in the right direction for those who care to do things right.
This month, we’ve put together a one page handout of Daycare Standards which your daycare should be doing as a bare minimum to operate safely. This is a reader’s digest version of “The Four E’s of Excellence” which you received free when you joined The Dog Gurus.
We recently provided a Daycare Standards Summary List to IBPSA as a document they can provide to others in our industry looking for operational standards, to the media when they get reports of accidents or injuries, and to any lobbyists working to monitor daycare laws in a particular state. Included in this Daycare Standards handout are also tips to identify some red flags that might indicate you could use some adjustments or improvements in your center.
