010- Daycares
This week we sit down to talk about doggie daycares! Collin and Meghan have differing views on them, but how can you make them work for you? From having the right toys on hand, to being covered by insurance, we talk through it all!
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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Collin 0:16
I'm Collin.
Meghan 0:17
And I'm Megan.
Collin 0:18
And this is pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Meghan 0:25
Hi there and welcome to Episode 10, where today we're going to talk about daycares. daycares are where the pet comes to you for the day. So it's like a daycare for kids, but for dogs. Some follow up that we have from last week's episode. Did you hear last week's episode? It was with the house at diva. Her name is Kelly. And she is amazing. And we can't wait to have her on again. And we will definitely check out her book by going to her website house it diva.com she had some great stories and tips for housesitting. This isn't really follow up, but are you a pet groomer or know somebody who is, we'd love to have you on our show to share your experiences, what it's like offering those services, to check out our show notes for our contact information.
Collin 1:10
And onto the main topic of daycare. Right off the bat, the first decision you're going to have to decide is are you going to be a commercial based business or an in home doggie daycare, knowing which path you're going to follow is really going to inform many of the decisions regarding how you operate your daycare, and how you answer some of the questions that we're going to bring up here in a bit. So the goal of doggie daycare should be to provide dog and human interaction. So you're looking for socialization and mental stimulation of the dog. So when we say dog and human interaction remaining, a dog interacting with the dog and the dog interacting with a human, they shouldn't just be put into a corner or crate and left alone. That's definitely not what we're talking about. And we we don't want that to happen at all to owners really prefer doggie daycare and they typically seek that out when their dog needs to be socialized or exercised during the day. We sit regularly a Weimer Reiner whose parents work a long, long hours, and they will send her over to our house very regularly so that she can play with other dogs and get out all of her energy, which he has a lot of, because she's a woman writer,
Meghan 2:21
and she's also a puppy. That's another thing is when owners have puppies or energetic dogs, they'll usually send them to doggie daycare,
Collin 2:29
right? So whenever they're in your care, you're gonna want to make sure that they are getting as much energy out and as much playtime and exercise during the day as possible. So it's really beneficial if you have a large spacious yard or ample opportunities for walks in your area. We know some people who have put out trampolines, play ramps and tunnels in their play area outside, again, making sure that there are going on walks or have lots of play time for the interaction and the stimulation.
Meghan 2:56
And since we have kids, we actually have play towel in our house and a lot of times the dogs will actually run through that in our house
Collin 3:04
to play with. The dogs tend to use that tumble more than the kids these days. And it's really cute. We've actually had clients that have don't know each other outside of their pet care with us. But they have overtime synced up their schedules, so that their dogs are here on the same days so that they can have play friends.
Meghan 3:23
When you're wanting to go into doggy daycare, the business of it. There's a lot of things that you want to think about beforehand. One of those is how many dogs you'll take on. So this will be determined by if you're also boarding in your home. If you don't want that many dogs, you'll want to maybe take on less daycare clients or less boring clients based on how many overall you want to take on also what you have the space and time and ultimately patience for if you're doing doggie daycare and there's a lot of energetic young puppies running around that takes a lot of patience, sometimes training to to get them to live And so are you going to offer additional training and services, we don't offer any. But that could be an extra service that you add, especially if they're a puppy and they need to learn those cues of sit or stay. You can offer that as an additional service so that the dog will still have that training and that repetition during the day even when they're not with the owner. You want to have a contract and an agreement in place that covers the payment, the liability schedule, what the owner will or will not provide. And then if you have hardwood floors, you may consider asking the owners to have the dog's nails filed for hardwood floors because they can definitely scratch the hardwood or the laminate up pretty good. Insurance insurance insurance. Will your homeowners or renters insurance cover a claim if a client falls on your steps and files a lawsuit against you? Are you covered if dog bites a neighbor or gets hit by a car as it runs away or bolts out your door? Think of those things and make sure that you have insurance It's very important. It can be a little bit expensive, but it is definitely worth it. Also think of the cost of supplies and advertising your daycare business. And so will you use advertisers online such as next door, Facebook, Craigslist, or the old old fashioned flyers, you can put the flyers up at vets offices or groomers. We have found next door to be great. Next Door is an online neighborhood community that your neighbors right next door or within a couple blocks of you they can sign up for next door and they can see what's going on in the neighborhood and, and you can post your dog business on there as well. Also, those local Facebook groups have been a really big help for us as well as far as advertising your your day care business.
Collin 5:47
And ultimately, word of mouth is going to be the biggest one that's going to get you there. We have somebody in a local vet office that I think has referred probably five or six clients to us and each so it's It's those kind of things are just invaluable when you when you start making friends or you start making connections that you don't know how are going to pay off down the road.
Meghan 6:08
And then in terms of the cost of supplies, so buying cleaning supplies, sometimes the dogs will mark, especially if they're young puppies and they don't they're not neutered yet or they just don't understand. Belly bands are great for that. And they're just how would you describe them?
Collin 6:25
disposable elastic bands that wrap around the dog's waist that cover the urethra, the dog, the cat Mark? Is that too much information? Now?
Meghan 6:34
That's true. Okay, sure.
And then extra bowls and kennels also look into all applicable candle and state licenses. So does your city even allow you to keep multiple dogs in your home and we talked a lot about this during the boarding episode, which was episode eight. But there's also applies here to the doggie daycare, and our city allows up to three dogs in your home and then you'll need a kennel license in your city maybe higher or lower than that.
Collin 7:01
The next question to answer is, what kind of clients are you willing to accept? We are not a commercial based business. So we are an in home pet care. So that kind of dictates a little bit of what kind of clients will take. So we are willing to accept just about any dog that needs to criteria. It okay with kids, because we do have two young kids and then is it okay with other dogs, not just because we have we said other dogs in our house, but we have a dog ourselves that we want to make sure it's safe. And we'll sit large or small talk. So we've sat six pound your keys and hundred and 70 pound Great Danes. However, that may be different for you. Now you may decide you only want to care for small dogs or maybe dogs that need extra training so you can charge for that service as well. Ultimately, you'll need to find what works best for you and for your situation. And as part of this, as you start to acquire more and more clients, you'll need to recognize which dogs are going to go best with each other. Are there more social Dogs are there some aggressive dogs, and you definitely need to separate those if necessary. And that just takes time and observing the dogs. Unfortunately, that's not something that just comes up right away. And so don't be afraid to, to separate the dogs if not if you need to, that's okay. Again, falling in line of whether you're more of a commercial based or in home business. You know, some people will offer webcams where the owner can walk the dog playing or not. And that is not something we provide or want to provide because we don't want to have random people having access to our home. So we just send updates through photos and videos throughout the day while they're with us.
Meghan 8:37
And then also because we are through rover, they have what's called a rover cards and so you can send pictures through there and track how often the dog eats or poops or peas or drinks water. And that's all done through the rover card and I think wag has something similar as well.
Collin 8:54
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Meghan 9:29
carry some of our personal takeaways from doing doggie daycare. We were not able to provide doggie daycare in our previous situation. We were living in an apartment and it was very, very small. But we can now because we live in a house. We each find daycare to be a different kind of experience. So, Collin, you find it exhausting. Why is that?
Collin 9:55
Because you have multiple transition times so you're constantly having to have your hospital. Picked up and cleaned and presentable every morning and evening has dogs are picked up and dropped off. But you actually
Meghan 10:08
I, I like it. It allows the dogs to go home at the end of the day and so our evenings and overnights are free, so we don't have to worry about, you know, taking a dog out one more time at 10 o'clock or any of that stuff. So I find it a little more freeing.
Collin 10:25
So there are pros and cons to providing daycares. One of the pros is that you will become their second home, especially if you start doing daycares three times a week or more. So you may ask the owners to let you keep some of the dogs toys or even their bed at your house or food or food, especially food. Yeah, we have a client that just brought over the bed for their dog that we keep here permanently. We also have clients that bring over their food for the week and we just keep a supply on hand that is continually replenished this little hard because you have to work around and keep the dogs They're feeding schedules. That's hard to do because they're not in their normal homes. Once they become regulars, that gets a little easier. This includes sticking with their familiar commands and Q's, making sure that you're practicing often. And asking for clarification with the owners if there's any concerns or trouble that you're having. One thing that we've noticed is that it can be really hard to keep updates fresh and new, especially if you're sitting the same dog three times a week, if you're sending a morning and afternoon update. So we've really tried to focus on telling stories, and really grabbing and getting those great pictures of their time with us. We've been doing day here as for some dogs three to four times a week for like the last six months, and sometimes our updates can start sounding exactly the same. So that takes a little bit of time and care and collaboration between Megan and I to make sure that those are, are sounding nice.
Meghan 11:55
We touched on this earlier but one thing that you will want to have for daycare is lots of tools. And lots of play not just for outdoor but also think of indoor toys and activities. So they have balls, toy balls where you can hide the treats inside or they have puzzles and other mental stimulation for the dog I know Kong's are really good and you can put peanut butter inside. A lot of a lot of owners like to do that as well to keep their their puppies engaged.
Collin 12:23
We just have a toy bucket in a corner that we constantly refresh and replenish with toys that we get on sale or that people give us that is open play for all the dogs that come over to our house.
Meghan 12:34
You will also want to keep your yard fresh and clean and free of poop and debris. That's really hard with a lot of dogs coming and going and but it just needs to happen because you don't want dogs stepping in the poop and tracking it inside. Along with keeping your yard clean. You also want to check the fences and the gates regularly for holes or dig spots. And this goes along with keeping the air yard safe. So any places where they could the dogs could snag their paws or places where they could catch their feet while running. Like if you have a chain link fence, and there's a snag in it, you want to make sure that you keep your yard safe and clear of any sharp objects or corners. And also, if there's any wildlife in your yard, like snakes, or raccoons, or anything that could potentially scare the dog or bite the dog. Safety is the number one priority at doggie daycare, and a big thing that you want to think about before you start up your doggie daycare business is your drop off and pick up hours. This is huge. So what hours do you want to set? A typical day for doggie daycare is for a drop off is between seven and 9am. And it pickup is between four and 6pm. But with doggie daycare, the hours can vary and it's whatever you want to set we've had as early as 5:30am and as late as a 10pm pickup, but that's all going to depend on you and your schedule and what the parameters that you want to set for your business. So be ready for people to show up early. We just had that happen. This morning where a client said she was going to show up at 8am and she showed up at 730
Collin 14:07
when we were in the middle of showering and getting ready for the day, which was quite a fun event getting rushed in trying to get get that taken care of.
Meghan 14:16
Yes, so always be ready for early drop off and pick up late for the dogs. Things happen where owners, maybe they're doing a quick trip one day and they're getting caught in rush hour traffic or a big storm hits or something delays happen and so just be ready for that. So have policies in place and communicate those expectations so that you aren't caught off guard or frustrated at the end of the day. We have been thinking about installing a camera doorbell to let us know when clients are pulling in so they can make sure everything is ready for this one. Let us know when the owner is pulling up into our driveway so that we don't have to Wait for them to be at our door while they're ringing the doorbell and creating creating chaos with the other dogs.
Collin 15:05
And sometimes people come over and want to do a drop off or pick up over our kids naps. And so we don't want them ringing the doorbell and the dogs that we are currently sitting and barking and waking our kids up. So it'd be nice to have a notification when that when they pull up so that we can just be opening the door for them and get bringing their dog out to them. Another reason why it's important to have your pickup and drop off time set ahead of time is because you're going to need to be scheduling other meet and greets around the doggy daycares, which can be really hard since most people want to do a meet and greet in the afternoon, which is when most of the pickups are so you'll have to have some little flexibility in there and it can get a little hectic. But it is something to keep in mind that when someone says four to six or something like that, you may have to schedule a meet and greet over that time as well. So kind of be ready to multitask of Getting a dog out the door while you're bringing one in for a meet and greet. Another part of setting up the daycare business is deciding whether you will have a daily play schedule. So some people will have a morning open play time. And then a quiet time between 12 and two or 11 and one and then another open play time, whether that's inside or outside, depending on the weather. So decide what you want or need for structure wise for the time that you're playing with the pets. Or you can just include them as part of your daily routine. And that's what we do. We tell our clients that when the dog is here, the dog is part of our family. So when we are upstairs, the dogs get to come upstairs with us when we're outside playing the dogs are outside playing with us when we're at the dinner table having dinner, they're all gathered around looking at us wanting wanting food. There's no real play structure. It's it's based on our family schedule at the docks get to be a part of that. Well, that wraps up daycares and if you have anything That that we've missed or have questions, send feedback to feedback at pet sitter confessional calm. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at pet sitter confessional and twitter PS confessional. Make sure you're subscribed on iTunes, Google Play Spotify or wherever you listen so you never missed a new episode.
Meghan 17:19
And please join us next week for when we talk about how city See you then
Keywords: dogs, daycare, doggie daycare, clients, owners, play, business, yard, home, toys, people, schedule, confessional, day, puppies, vegan protein, ready, updates, regularly, greet
