Dog Daycare Attendant Career Guide: What the Job Is and How to Get Hired

A dog daycare attendant is the staff member who supervises groups of dogs during the workday at a daycare, boarding kennel or pet resort: leading play, keeping the group safe, cleaning between romps and feeding on schedule.

The job sits inside a broader occupation.

O*NET defines Animal Caretakers (SOC 39-2021) as workers who feed, water, groom, bathe, exercise or otherwise care for pets and other non-food animals.

The listed settings include kennels and animal shelters, and the tasks include keeping records and cleaning and disinfecting cages.

Daycare attendants share that occupation with groomers, bathers and kennel attendants, which is why BLS reports pay for the occupation as a group rather than for daycare attendants alone.

Companies brand the job differently.

Camp Bow Wow's national careers page uses the title “Certified Camp Counselor®” and directs applicants to individual Camp locations to apply.

Dogtopia calls its playroom attendants “Canine Coaches”.

The closest neighbor is the kennel attendant.

BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook describes kennel attendants as caring for pets often overnight, in place of owners — cleaning cages and dog runs, feeding, exercising and playing with animals.

Daycare attendants do that same care work while a group is awake and playing together, which adds a second skill: reading how a roomful of unfamiliar dogs is getting along and stepping in before rough play turns into a fight.

The spine of the day is supervised group play: check-ins at drop-off, playgroups through the morning and afternoon, rest breaks, and pickups at close.

BLS lists the typical duties of animal care and service workers as giving food and water, cleaning equipment and living spaces, monitoring and recording diet, condition and behavior, examining animals for illness or injury, exercising animals, bathing and nail trimming, and training.

O*NET's highest-rated core tasks for animal caretakers are feeding and watering animals according to schedules, observing animals for illness, disease or injury, and getting care or contacting a veterinarian for a sick or injured animal.

In a daycare that last task works as spot-and-refer: you notice the limp, the sore ear or the cut, separate the dog from the group, and tell the owner and the facility's veterinarian.

Attendants do not diagnose or treat.

Cleaning is core work, too.

O*NET lists “Do facility laundry and clean, organize, maintain, and disinfect animal quarters” as a core task for the occupation.

Brands run the day differently, and their own pages show the shape of it.

Dogtopia's published daycare day includes 8–10 hours of open play with a midday nap from 12–2 p.m. in crates, during which staff serve lunches, give medications and clean playrooms.

Dogtopia also says it separates dogs into playrooms by size and temperament, uses home-style crates for naps and sanitizes playrooms twice daily.

Hounds Town USA says it groups daycare dogs into specialized packs by size, temperament, energy level and play style across 5+ play areas.

Grouping dogs well is the craft of the job: who ends up in which room decides how the whole day goes.

Daycare attendant work shows up wherever dogs spend the day: standalone daycares, boarding kennels and pet resorts that attach daycare to overnight care, vet clinics, shelters and the pet care areas of big-box pet stores.

BLS's employer split shows how varied the occupation is.

In 2025 the largest employers of animal caretakers were other personal services (40%), self-employment (25%), professional, scientific and technical services (10%, a group that includes vet clinics), retail trade (9%) and arts, entertainment and recreation (5%).

That split covers all animal caretakers — groomers, bathers and kennel staff included — not daycare attendants alone, but it shows the range of settings the occupation works across.

Chain daycare brands hire for this role under their own programs: Camp Bow Wow camps, Dogtopia playrooms, Hounds Town's pack-based playgroups and The Dog Stop.

The Dog Stop's services combine daycare, boarding, grooming, pet retail and training, and its careers page describes hiring for dog daycare and dog grooming jobs.

Best Friends Pet Care describes itself as employee-owned through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, with 80+ locations nationwide.

Its roles list includes Day Camp Counselors, who facilitate playgroups and enrichment activities, alongside Center Managers, Animal Care Technicians, Customer Service Representatives, Groomers & Stylists and Dog Trainers.

In big-box retail, PetSmart describes its PetsHotel Specialist role as handling check-ins and check-outs, leading playtime, caring for pets and keeping the hotel clean.

Watch the titles at PetSmart: a “Pet Care Associate” there cares for the store's live animals for sale — fish, reptiles, birds and small animals — not boarding dogs.

Dog care belongs to PetsHotel associates.

The entry bar is low, and each employer sets it.

BLS says animal care and service workers typically have a high school diploma or equivalent, need no prior work experience in a related occupation and learn the occupation on the job.

Animal experience helps with hiring — BLS says many employers prefer to hire people who have experience with animals — and it is worth describing all of yours when you apply: your own dogs, volunteering, fostering or pet sitting for neighbors.

O*NET puts animal caretakers in Job Zones 1 and 2 — very little to some preparation — with on-the-job training that runs from a few days to one year.

Brands describe their own training.

PetSmart says PetsHotel onboarding covers operations, dog behavior, safe handling and customer service.

Dogtopia says its Canine Coach training runs as a four-part process whose curriculum is approved for CCPDT continuing education credits.

BLS lists the qualities that matter in this occupation: compassion, customer-service skills, detail orientation, patience, physical stamina, problem-solving and reliability.

Availability is part of the deal.

BLS notes part-time work is common for animal caretakers, and schedules can include evenings, weekends and holidays.

Every posting lists its own requirements, so read it before you apply — what a facility actually wants is what its ad says.

BLS has no daycare-attendant-only wage: the role is counted inside animal caretakers (SOC 39-2021), a group that also includes groomers, bathers and kennel attendants.

In the Occupational Outlook Handbook, BLS put the median annual wage for animal caretakers at $35,360 in May 2025, with the lowest 10% earning under $27,250 and the highest 10% earning over $50,060.

The OEWS survey, which counts wage-and-salary jobs only, put the median at $17.00 per hour, with the 10th percentile at $13.10 and the 90th percentile at $24.07, across 266,910 animal caretaker jobs.

Within NAICS 812900, Other Personal Services — the industry group that contains pet care services such as boarding and daycare alongside unrelated personal services — the animal caretaker median was $16.92 per hour ($35,190 per year) across 146,190 jobs.

Individual employers set their own pay — Camp Bow Wow franchisees, for example, set their own wage and benefit programs — so one facility's wage can sit above or below these occupation-level figures.

For the full percentile table, industry rows and the occupation notes behind these numbers, see our dog daycare attendant pay page.

The occupation is projected to grow.

BLS's Employment Projections, which count self-employed workers alongside employees, put animal caretaker jobs at 365,300 in 2025, growing 12% to 409,400 by 2035 — faster than the 3% projected for all occupations.

BLS also projects about 69,400 openings per year over 2025–2035 for animal care and service workers — the broader group of caretakers plus trainers — with most openings replacing workers who leave the occupation.

On the floor, the ladder runs from attendant to lead to manager.

PetSmart's published boarding path moves a PetsHotel Specialist up to PetsHotel Lead, who holds store keys, and then to PetsHotel Leader, who supervises and trains the hotel's associates.

Best Friends Pet Care lists Center Managers among its roles, and The Dog Stop's careers page pairs daycare hiring with grooming hiring — at The Dog Stop, the daycare and grooming sides sit under one roof.

Our sources carry no daycare-manager wage.

BLS's closest stand-in group, first-line supervisors of personal service workers (SOC 39-1022), earned a median of $21.98 per hour ($45,720 per year) in NAICS 812900 Other Personal Services in May 2025 — a proxy for that wider occupation, not a daycare-manager wage.

Internal moves happen too, and employers publish them: Petco's careers site says over 40% of General Manager and District General Manager positions were filled by internal promotions.

PetSmart's own careers page describes its trainer route as 16 hours of pre-work plus 80 hours of paid, hands-on shadowing before an associate becomes a certified PetSmart trainer — one example of a pet care role leading into dog training.

The upsides:

• Entry is practical: a high school diploma or equivalent is the typical entry education, no prior work experience in a related occupation is needed, and the occupation is learned on the job, according to BLS.
• You spend the day with dogs, and the work is active rather than seated.
• BLS projects 12% growth for animal caretakers from 2025 to 2035, against 3% for all occupations.
• Some employers add pet perks: Best Friends Pet Care lists free doggy daycare and discounted boarding for employees' own pets.
• PetSmart lists PetsHotel benefits including discounts, health programs, PTO, 50% off the associate's own pet's hotel or day camp stay, and additional incentives for overnight care.

The trade-offs:

• Much of the work is physical — moving and cleaning cages, lifting bags of food, exercising animals — and BLS says workers need stamina to kneel, crawl and lift heavy supplies.
• Noise and standing add up: in O*NET's work-context survey, 78% of animal caretakers said they are exposed to distracting or uncomfortable noise every day, and 56% said they stand continually or almost continually.
• In the same survey, 56% of animal caretakers reported working outdoors, exposed to all weather, every day.
• Schedules bend toward the clients' week: part-time work is common, shifts can include evenings, weekends and holidays, and 24-hour facilities may need round-the-clock care.
• Pay is modest for the occupation — the May 2025 median for animal caretakers was $35,360 — and it varies by employer and location.
• BLS cautions the work can be emotionally distressing in some settings, naming shelter work where staff may see abused, injured or sick animals and some caretakers help veterinarians euthanize animals.

Apply at the facility level.

Camp Bow Wow's national careers page directs applicants to individual Camp locations' own websites to apply, and a Camp location careers page tells applicants they are applying to work for the franchisee — the business that does the hiring — not the brand.

Brands also post centrally: Best Friends Pet Care lists its roles on its careers page, PetSmart describes its PetsHotel path on its own careers site, and The Dog Stop's careers page invites applications for dog daycare and dog grooming jobs.

Search more than one title.

Employers brand the role under their own names — Certified Camp Counselor® at Camp Bow Wow, Canine Coach at Dogtopia, Day Camp Counselor at Best Friends Pet Care — and generic postings use titles like dog daycare attendant, playgroup attendant, canine counselor or dog handler.

Check several of those variants before you decide a city has no openings.

When you apply, lean on what the postings actually ask for: animal experience, schedule flexibility and comfort with the physical side of the job.

Browse current openings on our dog daycare attendant jobs page — new listings appear as daycares, kennels and pet care businesses post.