Jobs Working With Dogs: Every Career From Daycare to Training

Dog careers have an entry floor, and it trains you: 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.

Experience with animals helps at this level — BLS notes employers commonly prefer to hire people who have it, and volunteering, fostering or walking the neighbors' dogs builds it for free.

O*NET places animal caretakers in Job Zone 1-2, very little to some preparation needed, with on-the-job training ranging from a few days to one year.

BLS notes part-time work is common in the occupation, schedules can include evenings, weekends and holidays, and 24-hour facilities such as kennels and shelters may need round-the-clock care.

The entry-level titles:

• Kennel attendant. BLS describes kennel attendants as caring for pets, often overnight, in place of owners: cleaning cages and dog runs, feeding, exercising and playing with the animals. Browse kennel attendant jobs.
• Dog daycare attendant. The daycare version of the same work: supervising playgroups, feeding, cleaning between rotations and watching each dog's behavior. Best Friends Pet Care, an employee-owned boarding and daycare company with 80+ locations, calls its version of the role Day Camp Counselor and says counselors facilitate playgroups and enrichment activities. Read the dog daycare attendant career guide for the full job.
• Dog bather. A grooming-floor job O*NET lists among the titles animal caretakers report holding. Scenthound's Dog Bather / "Scent Tech" posting spells out the work — bathing, blow-drying, brushing coats and trimming or grinding nails — and lists a training path up to Groomer. The dog bather guide covers this role in detail.
• Animal care attendant. BLS describes shelter attendants working with cats and dogs in shelters or rescue leagues: basic care plus possible admin duties such as record keeping, answering public questions and screening would-be adopters. Browse animal care attendant jobs.
• Big-box pet care associate. Big-box pet stores run boarding and daycare floors of their own, not just retail shelves: PetSmart describes its PetsHotel Specialist role as handling check-ins and check-outs, leading playtime, caring for pets and keeping the hotel clean. One naming trap: at PetSmart, the Pet Care Associate title means caring for the store's live animals for sale — fish, reptiles, birds and small animals — not boarding dogs. Browse pet care associate jobs.

Whatever the title, the task list overlaps.

BLS's typical duties for the occupation read like one shared job description: giving food and water, cleaning equipment and living spaces, monitoring and recording diet, condition and behavior, examining animals for illness or injury, exercising them, bathing and nail trimming and clipping, and training.

From the entry floor, several skilled careers open up — and no degree appears in BLS's typical-entry description of the field: the whole animal care and service worker group typically runs on a high school diploma or equivalent and on-the-job learning.

The skill comes from employer training programs, time at the table and, for groomers who take that route, grooming school or an apprenticeship.

Dog groomer.

Grooming is the craft lane, and the ladder up it is something employers publish themselves.

PetSmart's salon careers page describes a path that starts at Bather — you'll bathe over 125 dogs, the page says, before moving on to its paid Grooming Academy — then Pet Stylist in Training, then Professional Pet Stylist.

O*NET's reported titles for animal caretakers include Dog Groomer, Pet Groomer and Pet Stylist, sitting right beside Kennel Attendant and Dog Bather.

Groomers work in independent salons, big-box stores, franchise salons, mobile vans and house calls; cat-only, show and competition grooming are specializations built on the same craft.

Browse dog groomer jobs.

Dog trainer.

Boarding companies employ trainers directly — Best Friends Pet Care lists Dog Trainers among its roles.

PetSmart trains its own: the company says its trainers complete 16 hours of pre-work and 80 hours of hands-on shadowing, paid on the clock, and graduate — in the company's own wording — as certified PetSmart trainers, with commission possible on top.

Browse dog trainer jobs.

Daycare floors have their own training: Dogtopia calls its playroom attendants Canine Coaches and says they complete a four-part training process whose curriculum is approved for CCPDT continuing education credits.

Supervisor and manager rungs.

The ladders employers publish run from the floor upward.

PetSmart's published PetsHotel path runs PetsHotel Specialist, then PetsHotel Lead, who holds store keys, then PetsHotel Leader, who supervises and trains the hotel's associates, and Best Friends Pet Care lists Center Managers among its roles.

On the grooming side, Petco's grooming careers page shows an internal ladder — described there in an employee testimonial — from bather to Petco Pet Stylist, Pet Stylist Pro, Grooming Salon Manager and Grooming Mentor.

Two more skilled niches rest on the same foundation: grooming instructors teach the craft to the next class of groomers, and mobile groomers run the whole groom inside a van instead of a salon.

Self-employment is a real share of this field, not a fringe route.

In 2025, 25% of animal-caretaker jobs were self-employed, per BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook — a share for the whole occupation group, groomers and kennel staff included, not any single role.

Dog walker and pet sitter.

Walking and sitting can run fully self-employed: you can work for a pet sitting and walking company, take bookings through an app, or build your own client roster.

The dog walker guide breaks down all three routes; browse pet sitter jobs if sitting is the draw.

Independent groomer.

Experienced groomers go independent by opening a salon or running a mobile van of their own.

Independent trainer.

Trainers with a track record take private clients, run group classes, or build a training business of their own.

One thing the self-employed route changes is the data itself.

Federal wage statistics count wage-and-salary jobs — the May 2025 OEWS release counted 266,910 animal-caretaker jobs — so what the self-employed earn sits outside those figures.

No degree appears in the typical-entry picture for the jobs on this floor.

BLS says animal care and service workers — groomers, attendants, bathers, walkers and sitters among them — typically have a high school diploma or equivalent, need no prior work experience in a related occupation, and learn on the job.

The degree careers nearby are veterinary ones: the same animal-handling foundation, plus formal schooling and, for technicians in most states and provinces, a passing exam score to be credentialed.

Veterinary technician.

BLS lists an associate's degree as the typical entry-level education for veterinary technologists and technicians, with a 2025 median of $47,380.

Technician credentialing runs through the states: most states and provinces require a passing score on the Veterinary Technician National Exam, owned by AAVSB, for a technician to be credentialed, and the credential itself is issued by the state or province, not AAVSB.

Veterinary assistant.

BLS covers vet-clinic animal care under a separate profile, Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers: most have a high school diploma or equivalent, the training is short-term and on the job, certification is not mandatory, and the 2025 median was $38,150 ($18.34/hour).

Vet clinics already sit inside this field — 10% of animal caretakers worked in professional, scientific and technical services in 2025, an industry group that includes vet clinics.

Treat both as bridges, not a next step anyone owes: the kennel floor and the playroom build the same handling hours either way.

Federal wage data has no dog-only lines.

BLS does not publish a groomer-only occupation, there is no separate dog-walker or pet-sitter occupation code, and the occupation it reports — animal caretakers, SOC 39-2021 — folds groomers, bathers, kennel and daycare attendants, walkers and sitters into one figure.

• Animal caretakers (includes groomers): a May 2025 median of $35,360 per year, or $17.00 per hour. The lowest 10% earned under $27,250 and the highest 10% over $50,060, per BLS.
• Daycare and kennel managers (closest stand-in): first-line supervisors of personal service workers, SOC 39-1022, earned a median of $21.98 per hour ($45,720 per year) in other personal services in OEWS May 2025 — a proxy, because BLS has no pet-resort-manager code.
• Veterinary technicians (associate degree): a 2025 median of $47,380, per BLS.
• Veterinary assistants: a 2025 median of $38,150, or $18.34 per hour, per BLS.

Read the list with every label attached: each figure is a BLS median covering the occupation named, not a wage for the role in your city, and an employer's posted pay or commission is that employer's own figure.

The spread runs wide inside the caretaker number too — the top 10% earned over $50,060 against a $35,360 median.

Start from the work you want to do all day, because these jobs divide cleanly.

If the craft of the cut is the draw, grooming is the lane and bathing is its door.

If it is dog behavior and play, daycare and training are.

If it is exercise and variety, walking and sitting.

If it is medicine, the veterinary bridge is the path.

Weigh the conditions, because they are measurable.

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.

And 56% reported working outdoors, exposed to all weather, every day.

BLS describes the work as physical — moving and cleaning cages, lifting bags of food, exercising animals — with part-time schedules common, evenings, weekends and holidays in the rotation, and round-the-clock care at 24-hour facilities.

Weigh the emotional load too.

BLS warns the work can be emotionally distressing: shelter workers may see abused, injured or sick animals, and some caretakers help veterinarians euthanize animals.

Whatever you pick, the qualities BLS lists for the occupation are the same seven: compassion, customer-service skills, detail orientation, patience, physical stamina, problem-solving and reliability.

And the credential many employers look for is the same one: experience with animals.

Start where the hiring bar is lowest, let the handling hours pile up, and the rest of the map opens from there.

Career information, not legal advice: age and hour rules come from DOL's child labor regulations and state labor departments, and each employer sets its own hiring rules — confirm details with DOL's Wage and Hour Division, your state labor department or the employer.