Starting a Dog Daycare

If you have a way with animals and if you enjoy being around them, you can consider that a real moneymaking asset. You could consider opening a dog day care, and you would be able to turn something you love, into something that actually makes you money. Just imagine – no more reporting to your boss!

Now if you're someone who loves being around cute animals, you don't really have to be sold on the idea. How do you argue against a great business idea that actually lets you have fun and be silly all day, that lets you make a lot of money, and that saves you a commute and spares you the office politics?

People use the services offered at doggie day care centers not just because they need someplace to leave their pets when they go on vacations, but also because people are beginning to realize now that leaving a dog locked up at home all day while everyone's away at work, is just plain cruel. People use the services of a dog day care center just to give their pet a chance to socialize with other animals. The best part in all of this is that you don't really need any kind of special qualifications. You need no education or anything at all to start a dog daycare center. You just need to be good with animals and have a head for business, is all.

Stay-at-home moms often do great at this business. They start out by just taking care of their neighbors' pets – maybe four or five of them at a time, until they begin to get the hang of it. They don't really need a business license or any serious accounting skills this way. They can just try the business on for size to see if it works out, and they can get a taste of the kind of problems and benefits there are to such a thing. Once they feel that it makes sense for them, they can go ahead full steam.

If all of this seems to really appeal to you, you can start out by setting a room in your home aside for this, and advertising your dog daycare services. Usually, you should have a separate home for this kind of thing – one with its own enclosed backyard. Most people won't be willing to entrust their pets to a dog daycare center that has no open yard.

Before you set a price for your daycare services, consider how much you should charge. You can look around to see what other day care services in your area charge, and perhaps undercut them by just a little so that you can get yourself started. You can then try to see if things work out at that price. You can use this experience later to really set a serious price, the day that you really open your business in earnest.