Top Tips to Running a Successful Pet Care Facility

The pet care service industry is an unregulated industry so how do you know if you are operating an average or excellent operation? How do you know if you’re running a successful pet care facility?

Here are a few tips to help you evaluate your operations.

Review the number of medical emergencies you have each year in your pet care facility. Dog daycare is a service at higher risk for pet injuries and we’ve found excellent operators have a maximum of two injuries to dogs or staff members per year that require medical attention. If you have more than that you’ll want to watch our video on industry standards to find out the two systems that you can improve to reach this level of excellence.

Look at the space you are allocating for dog daycare and the staffing requirements. Best practices are established to ensure dogs feel comfortable and can rest as well as play when they are in daycare. Proper staffing is needed to ensure dogs are provided excellent quality care. These standards will help you run a safe facility:

• 75-100 square foot per dog in play area space for large and medium sized dogs
• 40-50 square foot per dog in play area space for small dogs
• Separate dogs by size in your playgroups
• One staff member for every 10-15 dogs in a playgroup (depending on the size of the dogs and the experience of the staff)

Pet care facilities that don’t adhere to these guidelines will have more incidents bewteen dogs. Enusre you are charging enought for your services so you can maintain these industry standards and still make a profit!

What type of facility design and materials are you using? Facility design and selection of materials is another area that separates excellent and average operators. How do you measure up to these best practices?

• Fencing a minimum of 6 feet in height
• Operating process to check safety of play areas prior to releasing dogs into them
• Quality fence/enclosure materials that keep dogs safe and secure (tip enclosure walls should have no gaps at bottom and at least 1-2 should have tops
• Cushioned flooring in indoor play space

Interested in the reasons behind these best practices? You’ll learn that and more in our video discussion of pet care facility best practices.