DogVacay wants to be the Airbnb for pet-sitting

Have you ever stopped to think how lonely and sad your dog must be while you’re not at home? Everyone who has a dog has to deal with this, and there’s no easy solution. Doggy daycares aren’t exactly within the budget of most people, and it can be difficult to find someone to keep your dog company every day. Fortunately, a new startup by the name of DogVacay has a solution, one that takes a page from the Airbnb handbook. 

Have you ever seen a home security video of what dogs do when their owners go to work? I like to imagine that they chill out and celebrate like teenagers whose parents are away, but that’s not usually the case. They typically either mope in the same spot for hours, or anxiously stare at the door waiting for their owner to come home (on special days, this all might be punctuated by antsy moments of ripping up the couch pillows or going through the recycling bin.) It’s a pretty sad sight. A doggie daycare program could be a good fix, but those things are often so expensive that they can seem like an indulgence — upwards of $45 a day in major metro areas. And it’s not a guarantee that your pooch will have a good time surrounded by 30 to 40 other dogs. DogVacay, the startup that has been billed as an ‘Airbnb for dogs’, has launched a new solution today with its Daycare product. DogVacay’s core product connects pets with local dogsitters for times when the owner is going away on a trip, and the new Daycare option does the same thing for daily pet boarding, from morning until afternoon or evening. Each DogVacay host sets his or her own price, so the rates vary, but CEO Aaron Hirschhorn said in an interview this week that the average Daycare fee is around $20 a day.