A pet care associate is the animal care job inside pet retail: feeding, cleaning and health-watching for the live animals a store sells.
At PetSmart, that means the fish, reptiles, birds and small animals on the sales floor — the boarding dogs next door belong to the PetsHotel team.
The typical entry bar, per BLS, is a high school diploma or equivalent and no prior experience — you learn on the clock, though many employers prefer some animal experience.
This guide covers the day-to-day work, the pay, the hiring requirements and where the path leads.
What is a pet care associate?
A pet care associate is the entry-level animal care role in pet retail.
You care for the live animals a store sells and displays, keep their habitats clean and healthy, and help customers and shelves at the same time.
Chain titles differ, and one difference matters enough to name up front.
At PetSmart, the Pet Care Associate title covers the store's live animals for sale — fish, reptiles, birds and small animals.
The boarding dogs in PetsHotel belong to a different team, under titles like PetsHotel Specialist.
Petco's store careers page lists the equivalent work as Animal Care Specialist and Aquatic Specialist roles, alongside Store Associate and Dog Training.
A Pet Supplies Plus posting calls the same work Retail Pet Store Associate (Team Member).
In federal labor data, the closest available occupation is animal caretakers (includes groomers), the SOC 39-2021 occupation O*NET defines as workers who feed, water, groom, bathe, exercise or otherwise care for pets and other non-food animals, and who may keep records and clean and disinfect cages.
That proxy is why every pay figure on this page is labelled for animal caretakers as a whole — our research found no BLS wage line for pet care associates specifically.
The job reads as a cousin of kennel, shelter and grooming work: similar care tasks, different employer and animals.
Not the hotel job
What does a pet care associate do day to day?
The core of the job is routine care on a schedule.
BLS lists the duties of animal care and service workers as giving food and water, cleaning equipment and living spaces, monitoring and recording animals' diet, condition and behavior, examining animals for illness or injury, exercising them, and bathing, nail trimming and clipping.
O*NET's task ratings for the occupation put feeding and watering animals according to a schedule at the top, followed by getting treatment or a veterinarian for sick or injured animals and observing animals for signs of illness.
In a store, that second task is a referral job: you notice, you report it to the lead or manager, and treatment stays with the veterinarian.
Cleaning is a real share of the shift, not a side task.
O*NET counts facility laundry and cleaning, organizing, maintaining and disinfecting animal quarters among the occupation's core tasks.
Store work fills the rest of the day.
PetSmart describes its entry Pet Associate role as a mix of helping customers, stocking shelves and caring for pets and habitats.
One Pet Supplies Plus posting adds register shifts, stocking heavy bags of pet food, helping customers at self-wash stations and occasional walk-in nail trims with training provided — and it asks for evening, weekend and holiday availability.
Where the store boards dogs, the same skills run a hotel.
PetSmart describes the PetsHotel Specialist role as handling check-ins and check-outs, leading playtime, caring for pets and keeping the hotel clean, and says every PetsHotel location partners with a local vet while its associates are safety-certified.
One line on scope: you are the early-warning system.
You notice, you report, and the veterinarian diagnoses and treats.
PetSmart does describe one hands-on medical task for its hotel team — it says its PetsHotel associates give medications at the proper time — but deciding what an illness is stays with the veterinarian.
Where do pet care associates work?
The job exists where pet retail and live animals meet: big-box pet stores, pet supply chains, and the boarding and day camp operations inside them.
Petco calls its stores Pet Care Centers; its careers site, read in 2026, cites more than 1,500 store locations plus 250-plus Vetco Total Care hospitals.
Pet Supplies Plus describes itself, in a 2026 franchise posting, as the nation's largest independent pet store chain, with over 700 stores and a Michigan headquarters.
Franchise structure matters when you apply.
A Pet Supplies Plus franchise posting states that franchised stores are independently owned and operated, and that the local franchise business — not PSP Franchise Operations — is the sole employer setting hiring, pay and benefits.
At a franchised store, the local franchise business you interview with is the employer.
The proxy occupation is bigger than retail.
BLS's employer breakdown for all animal caretakers in 2025 puts other personal services first at 40% — the group holding grooming, boarding and daycare businesses along with unrelated personal services.
Self-employment follows at 25%, then professional, scientific and technical services at 10% (the group that includes vet clinics), retail trade at 9% and arts, entertainment and recreation at 5%.
What do you need to get hired?
The bar to entry is low on paper.
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 job on the clock — though many employers prefer candidates with some animal experience.
O*NET rates the occupation at Job Zone 1-2, very little to some preparation needed, with on-the-job training ranging from a few days to one year.
Chains add their own onboarding: PetSmart says PetsHotel training covers operations, dog behavior, safe handling and customer service.
The qualities BLS lists for the occupation: compassion, customer-service skills, detail orientation, patience, physical stamina, problem-solving and reliability.
On an application, translate any animal contact you have into those terms — volunteering, fostering, farm or stable work, 4-H.
Availability can be a requirement in itself: a Pet Supplies Plus posting we found asks for evenings, weekends and holidays, and BLS notes that schedules in this occupation include exactly those windows, with part-time work common.
Age: plan on 16 or older
How much does a pet care associate make?
Our research found no BLS wage line for pet care associates specifically, so the honest numbers come from the closest available occupation: animal caretakers (SOC 39-2021), which includes groomers and kennel and daycare attendants.
Read everything below as occupation-level pay for that proxy, not a pet care associate wage or a chain pay scale.
In the OEWS survey for May 2025, the median wage for animal caretakers was $17.00 per hour, or $35,360 per year.
The 10th percentile earned $13.10 an hour and the 90th percentile $24.07.
OEWS counted 266,910 jobs for animal caretakers (includes groomers) — wage-and-salary jobs only, so self-employed workers are not in that count.
BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook page for the same occupation and year matches the median at $35,360, with the lowest 10% earning under $27,250 and the highest 10% above $50,060.
Where you work moves the number.
In OEWS's May 2025 industry rows, animal caretakers in other miscellaneous retailers (NAICS 459900, the group that includes pet and pet-supply stores) earned a median of $16.96 an hour.
In other personal services (NAICS 812900, the group that holds pet care services along with unrelated personal services), the median was $16.92 an hour across 146,190 jobs.
Veterinary services came in lower, at $15.46 an hour.
Employer postings give real, narrowly scoped examples.
One Pet Supplies Plus franchise store — Oro Valley, Arizona — posted $15.15 to $16.00 per hour for part-time Retail Pet Store Associates in 2026.
That is one store's rate for one year; franchised stores are each their own employer, so it is not a chain-wide scale.
The direction of the field is up.
BLS's Employment Projections have animal caretaker employment growing 12% from 2025 to 2035, from 365,300 to 409,400 jobs — a count that includes the self-employed — against 3% growth for all occupations.
Part of the deal at the chains is value that never reaches the hourly rate: the store discounts and pet care perks listed under pros and cons below.
What is the career path?
Big-box retail publishes its ladders, which makes this one of the more mappable entry jobs in animal care.
PetSmart names the entry Pet Associate role and a set of store leadership titles: Experience Lead, Experience Leader (assistant store manager) and Store Leader.
A Process Lead title — Operations Supervisor — covers the operations side, and a PetsHotel Experience Lead covers the hotel side.
Inside the hotel, PetSmart's own path runs PetsHotel Specialist, then PetsHotel Lead, a role that holds store keys, then PetsHotel Leader, who supervises and trains hotel associates.
Overnight care is a lane of its own.
One associate story on PetSmart's careers site traces a path from day camper to Overnight Pet Care associate to Senior Lead to Assistant Hotel Leader — a single story, but it shows the hotel has overnight roles to grow into.
Petco advertises the same direction from the top: its careers site says over 40% of General Manager and District General Manager positions were filled by internal promotions.
That is a company-reported figure with no date attached, but it tells you which way the chain says its store jobs point.
Two moves leave the retail ladder entirely: into the salon, where Petco lists Junior Groomer, Groomer and Grooming Salon Manager as their own store roles, and into the training room, where Petco lists Dog Training alongside them.
Both are separate roles with their own postings — not promotions that arrive with seniority in the animal care aisle.
Pros and cons of the job
No animal job is all cuddles.
The honest version of this one: a fast on-ramp and legible advancement, traded against noise, physical work, weekend shifts and modest pay.
The upsides:
- The entry bar is low: BLS's typical path is a high school diploma or equivalent, no prior experience, and the job learned on the clock — though many employers prefer candidates with animal experience.
- Training is structured at PetSmart: its PetsHotel onboarding covers operations, dog behavior, safe handling and customer service.
- Benefits reach down to part-time store roles at Petco. Its part-time list includes a 401(k) with company match, an employee stock purchase plan, a FlexWork Bridge Plan medical option with unlimited $0-copay virtual care visits, and discounts such as 20% off grooming and vet services — Petco notes benefits vary by role. PetSmart's PetsHotel list includes discounts, health programs, PTO, 50% off your own pet's hotel or day camp stay, and extra incentives for overnight care.
- Advancement is legible: published ladders, lead and leader titles, and Petco's own claim that over 40% of its General Manager and District General Manager positions were filled by internal promotions.
The tradeoffs:
- The work is physical. BLS describes moving and cleaning cages, lifting bags of food, and needing the stamina to kneel, crawl and lift heavy supplies.
- Noise and standing are daily conditions. 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.
- The schedule bends to the animals: evenings, weekends and holidays, with part-time work common and 24-hour facilities such as kennels and shelters needing round-the-clock care.
- Pay is modest — the occupation's median was $17.00 an hour in May 2025.
- The emotional weight is real in animal work. BLS warns the work can be emotionally distressing — its examples come from shelters, where workers may see abused, injured or sick animals and some caretakers help veterinarians euthanize.
The mix to judge honestly is retail plus animals: you will spend real parts of the shift facing humans, answering questions and working a register.
If that blend suits you, the entry barrier here is about as low as animal jobs get.
Where to find pet care associate jobs
Apply to the chains directly.
PetSmart's careers site posts retail-store and PetsHotel roles; Petco posts its Pet Care Center roles.
Pet Supplies Plus franchise postings come from the franchised store — since the local franchise business is the employer there, a chain's national careers page and a local store's posting are different things, so check both.
Bring two things to the application: open availability (evenings, weekends and holidays — the windows BLS says this occupation's schedules include), and any hands-on animal history, which is the experience BLS says many employers prefer.
Or start on our board: browse pet care associate jobs on GroomerHires, where grooming salons and pet care businesses post openings.
The same stores hire for the roles next to this one — dog bather jobs sit on the grooming side, and kennel attendant jobs cover the boarding side.
Career information, not legal, tax or insurance advice. Hiring rules are each employer's, and age rules belong to the Department of Labor and the states — confirm requirements with the employer's own posting and with DOL's Wage and Hour Division or your state labor department.