How to Start Your Dog Boarding Business: Dog Knowledge

INTRODUCTION

This book is about how I started a successful, home-based, dog boarding business in the middle of nowhere. The book is also about whether you, wherever you are, should do the same.

You can look on the internet and get all the information you need about how to make a physical kennel. But the why behind it, the how behind it, the practicality behind the physical kennel, that’s really what I am going to talk about.

Once I was in your position and knew little about boarding dogs. So in this revised and expanded second edition, I have added new sections and more resources to help you.

The first new section is about how to understand the dog community where you live. The second is about marketing, because it doesn’t matter how good you are, if you have no clients. The third new section is about starting and managing your business.

Because I love animals, I want there to be good places where people can board their dogs. And because I am out of the business now, I have no secrets to hold back. But if you talk to people who are in the business, they are not as likely to share the lessons they learned through hard knocks. They have no reason to help the competition.

Before you spend a dime on your dog boarding business, I want to give you the thought process you need to consider. If you buy this book, I want to save you money, effort, and time because you can learn from my experience. Think of my experience as your own secret weapon.

I want you to succeed. Or fail. Because if this book helps you understand why this is not a business for you, I will have succeeded just as much as if you find the book encouraging. The problems I solved will not be exactly the same as the problems you need to solve, though many of them will be.

This book has four parts: design, implementation, day-to-day operations, and entering the business. In case you are wondering, I also boarded cats and I will discuss cat boarding, too.

In the design section, I will tell you how I designed and built my kennel and offer suggestions about how you can, too. In the other three sections, I will cover topics ranging from setting up your business to acquiring customers to handling daily operations. Along the way, I will tell some personal stories because lessons from stories are easiest to remember.

The table of contents is only the briefest indication of all the topics I will cover.

Let me assure you; I didn’t come to this field as some kind of dog whisperer. In fact, I didn’t grow up with dogs. I owned my first dog, a golden retriever, just three years before I started my pet boarding business.

Here’s my story.

I was moved to a new state, pretty much against my will. I didn’t think it was a good idea to go to a place I knew nothing about, where I wouldn’t have a job and neither would my husband. We moved to be close to his parents who had relocated after they retired.

My husband and I bought a house on the outskirts of a town which was the county seat. Though it was a county seat, the town had a population of just 2,000 and the entire county had only 22,000 people.

After we settled in, my husband got a job which required travel, and I went downtown to look for work. The first place I applied was the local newspaper.

The editor hired me to do ad layouts. That had been his wife’s job, but he wanted to give her a break and get things done faster. At least that’s what he told me.

The editor usually held forth from his office with the office door open. When he wanted something, he just shouted. Normally, his wife was right outside the door, but on this occasion, I was closer than his wife.

He hollered, What’s another word for a nickname or what you call somebody?

Nom de plume, I shot back.

Doesn’t fit, he said.

Moniker, I said. There was a pause.

Nobody likes a smartass, he said.

Things were worse with his wife. If I laid out an ad, she wanted the text moved 1.5 mm to the right. On the next layout, she wanted the ad moved 1.5 mm to the left. If I used an Arial font, she wanted Helvetica. If I used Helvetica, she wanted Arial. Nothing I did was ever right for her.

After a few weeks, I gave up.

It didn’t help that I didn’t have a rural drawl like my employers. I speak with the national accent of radio and TV people, which means I don’t sound like I come from any particular place. But this experience made me feel like even more of an outsider.

I only had two job ideas left. First, I thought about doing something computer related since I had experience installing computer systems. The second idea was an ill-formed notion about working with dogs. I decided to walk down to city hall, talk to people in the offices, and ask which business they thought might work in the area.

They all voted for computers.

But they also told me a man had just opened a computer business in town. He could do everything I could do, and repair computers as well. I didn’t think I could compete head-to-head with someone who had a storefront location and that kind of expertise. I also didn’t know if there would be enough business in town for both of us.

When I asked the people in the courthouse if they thought there was a market for a dog boarding business, no one thought so. But it was my final idea, and I plunged ahead.

Did my idea work?

Let me put it this way: boarding dogs, I earned an income three times greater than that of a full-time employee at the local newspaper. The nearest town of size was a city of 150,000 a hundred miles away. Yet many people drove that hundred miles, bypassing other kennels along the way, to board with me.

My dog’s veterinarian boarded dogs, yet when he and his family went out of town, they boarded their two dogs with me. I ran my business, called The Pet Hotel, for five years and left only when my husband got a job offer in a larger city.

People who care about pets care about where they leave their pets. With most service businesses, the reason the business is successful is linked to the specific person running the business. You are the key. To put it another way, do you go to the hair salon for the salon, or for the stylist?

Part of this job is reassuring people their pet will be safe. If you are cut out for this, you will be telling the truth because their pet will be safe and well-cared-for with you. You don’t necessarily need to be a people person. You just need to inspire confidence in pet owners.

What I’m saying is, you can fake it with people, if you’re not a great people person, but you can’t fake it with the dogs. You have to like dogs. You are dealing with an entity that is alive, has great emotional value to people, and can be unpredictable.

If you haven’t done this before, you might dive right into the how to build it without thinking, Is this the right choice for me? Remember, your clients are choosing you. You have to be a confident, likable person to your clients.

As with anything, unless you know the details, the business may look good on the surface, but the devil is always in the details. Until you look at the details, you won’t know if boarding dogs is for you. There’s a downside to being a supermodel, and a downside to being a celebrity. There are downsides to the job you have right now. And you know the downside because you know the details.

If you aren’t the kind of person who cleans up after your dog when you walk it, this isn’t the job for you. If you like to sleep in on the weekends, this is not the job for you. If you want to work an eight-hour day, five days a week, this is not the job for you. But if you love dogs, it may be.

What you are trying to build up is a number of good clients with good dogs that you can take care of for years and years.