"Hi! How much do you charge for dog boarding over Christmas? Biscuit and Juno, December 21st to January 2nd. They're fine sharing. Is there a discount for two?"
You open the note on your phone where your dog boarding prices live. It says $45 a night, written two years ago, before the electricity bill doubled. You reply with $80 a night for both of them, sharing, because that feels generous and it is Christmas. She books in four minutes.
Later you work it out. Twelve nights in your biggest suite, over the only two weeks of the year when every run in the building could have sold twice. Two dogs, two feeding plans, one of them on a twice daily pill, and staff on holiday pay for three of those days. You did not quote a price. You quoted a habit.
How much should you charge for dog boarding? Start with one run-night
The useful unit in boarding is the run-night: one run, occupied for one night. Work out what one costs you before you look at anyone else's prices.
Split it in two. Fixed costs are the ones you pay whether the building is full or empty: rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, software, the manager's salary. Divide a month of those by the run-nights you realistically sell, not the run-nights you have. A 20-run building has about 600 run-nights a month, but at 60% average occupancy you sell around 360. If fixed costs come to $9,000, each sold night is carrying $25 before a dog walks in.
Variable costs are the ones each dog brings: staff time for feeding, turnouts, cleaning and medication (often 45 to 60 minutes of hands-on care across a day), laundry, cleaning supplies, food if you provide it. At $18 an hour, that is $14 to $18 of labor per dog per night. Add both halves and this example facility's floor is around $45 a night, before any profit.
Dog boarding prices: what the market tells you
Once you know your floor, local prices become useful. They tell you the ceiling: what clients in your area are used to paying and will not blink at.
Prices vary enormously by region, so treat these as illustrations, not benchmarks. In small towns and rural areas, a standard run is often somewhere around $30 to $50 a night. In suburbs, $45 to $75 is common. In big cities, standard runs can sit at $70 to $100 or more, with suites well above that. Call three facilities near you and ask what a large dog costs for a week in August. That beats any national average.
If the market ceiling sits below your cost floor, the answer is more add-ons or a different mix of stay types, not a lower rate.
Price by kennel size, not by dog
Many facilities price by dog weight. It is simpler to price by space, because space is what you are actually selling. A suite uses more floor, takes longer to clean, and is what a nervous owner will pay extra for. A Great Dane in a large run has removed that run from sale, whatever he weighs.
Three tiers cover most buildings. For example: standard run $48, large run $58, suite $75. Keep the steps big enough that the upgrade means something.
For two dogs from one household sharing a run, charge the run plus a second-dog rate rather than two full rates. Somewhere between 50% and 75% of the run price is a common range. The second dog still needs feeding, walking and watching, so it is never free. The same logic caps a multi-dog discount for separate runs: 10% to 15% off the second run is a kind gesture, anything that drops below your labor cost per dog is a loss you are choosing.
A multi-dog discount is a reward for a loyal household. It should never be a price below what the second dog costs you to look after.
Holiday and peak boarding rates
Boarding demand is lumpy. Thanksgiving, the stretch from Christmas to New Year, spring break and the summer holidays fill every run, while a wet week in February barely fills half. Pricing every night the same discounts your busiest nights.
A holiday rate is normal and clients expect it. A flat $8 to $15 a night on top, or 15% to 25%, is typical. Publish the dates on your website by early fall so nobody is surprised. Pair the rate with a minimum stay (three nights over Christmas is common) and a firmer cancellation rule: a cancelled holiday booking is a run you cannot refill.
Add-ons: charge for the extra work
If your staff do something for one dog and not for another, it belongs on the price list. Otherwise you are giving away the most labor-intensive parts of your service to the dogs who need them most. Typical add-ons, again as rough examples:
- Extra walk or one-to-one play time: $8 to $15 per session.
- Day play in group play for boarded dogs: $10 to $25 a day, or included in a suite rate as a selling point.
- Medication administration: one oral dose a day is often included; multiple doses, crushing tablets into food, eye drops or injections such as insulin are commonly $3 to $10 a day.
- A bath before going home: priced by size, and popular for long stays.
- Late checkout: a half-day charge after a cutoff time, because the run cannot be turned over for the next arrival.
Add-ons also make your base rate easier to defend. The owner of a healthy dog stops subsidizing the dog on four medications, and that owner can see exactly what they are paying for.
Deposits and the cancellation policy
A boarding booking holds a run that you then turn other dogs away from. A deposit makes that hold real. One night's charge or 25% to 50% of the stay is common, with the balance due at check-in rather than at pickup, when everyone is rushing and the dog is already jumping at the lobby door.
Send the policy with every confirmation. Something like: "A deposit of 30% confirms your booking. It is refundable up to 14 days before arrival. Holiday bookings (Dec 20 to Jan 3) require a 50% deposit, refundable up to 30 days before arrival. The balance is due at check-in." The same thinking applies to payment for training, covered in how to price dog training services.
Why underpricing hurts more in boarding
A trainer who underprices can sometimes make it up with volume. A boarding facility cannot. You have a fixed number of runs and a fixed number of nights, and every night sold too cheaply is a night you can never sell again. Cheap rates fill the building with low-margin stays on the very nights it would have filled at full price, and the staffing you can afford slides with the margin.
The practical fix is to make your prices a system rather than a memory: a nightly rate for each kennel size, a published list of extras, a deposit rule, and a holiday calendar. Then the quote for Biscuit and Juno is the same whoever answers the text.
In HeelYeah, that system sits in the booking itself. Clients request a stay from their portal, picking the dog and the dates, and nothing is booked until you approve it. You set a nightly rate for each kennel size plus your add-on extras, so every invoice is priced from the kennel the dog actually stays in. Approving the request raises the invoice, for the full amount up front or a deposit with the balance due at check-in, and day play for boarded dogs can be bundled into the stay or charged per day. The kennel management side then runs the stay itself, as covered in running a kennel without a whiteboard.
From a trainer using HeelYeah
“HeelYeah has made it so much easier to keep every part of my dog training business organized in one place. From client and pet information to paperwork, scheduling, and payments, everything is easy to find and manage.”
Work out your run-night cost this week. Set your tiers, write your holiday dates on the calendar, and put your extras in writing. The next text that asks "how much for two?" deserves an answer you have already thought about.