How to Choose a Daycare that Fits Your Dog

Not all dog daycares are equal to each other and even the best daycare might not be the best fityou’re your dog’s needs. The important thing is to find a place that you feel good about leaving your baby at and they feel good about staying. Here are some general things to look for at any place. It should be clean and smell good. If the smell is bothering you how bad is it for your super sniffer dog? Can you see your dog play? Are there web cams and windows for viewing? You should know where your dog is playing. Square footage can be important to a lot of dogs. It’s not the size of the space so much as it is square foot per dog. A 15,000 square feet place space that takes 15,000 dogs would be a place to avoid but a small place that takes just a few dogs might be just fine. Dogs Dig It is almost 14,000 square feet and we’re capped out at 120 dogs per day. That gives you almost 120 square feet per dog. Enough space to really play is THE SECOND MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF DAYCARE. Your dog is there to play and if they are squished up against other dogs they aren’t going to be allowed to play at a very high level because fights are much more likely to break out in a high stress environment. Also, indoors or outdoors is a matter of parent and dog preference. Most dogs prefer to be outside but for some dogs the closed in feeling of an indoor only daycare makes it not any fun at all for them. As far as the NUMBER ONE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF DAYCARE, safety you should look at how they separate packs and the training method by staff. Avoid at all costs any daycare that has a method you don’t agree with or wouldn’t use on your own dog. Other important questions to ask include the staff ratio to dogs (DDI uses 20:1), are the dogs kept in kennels during the day and if yes, for how long (DDI does NOT put your dog in a kennel except for pre-approved naps or 5 minute “time outs”) and what is the evaluation process.