Dog boarding & daycare in San Francisco, CA

Twenty-three Bay Area facility websites say a person stays overnight, and not one says nobody does. California makes every boarding operator tell you in writing when staff are on site; 94 of the 117 sites we reviewed say nothing about nights.

San Francisco is a Tier C market. California does not license or inspect dog boarding facilities at the state level, so there is no state license number to verify and no state inspection record to read. What California has is Chapter 11 of the Health and Safety Code, “Pet Boarding Facilities”, in force since January 1, 2017. It covers any premises boarding four or more pets for pay and requires every pet to be observed at least once in 24 hours, written care and emergency policies, and either a monitored fire alarm or a sprinkler system. Before boarding, the operator must give the owner in writing the drop-off and pick-up hours, the hours staff are on site, the size of the enclosures, how dogs are observed and the daily schedule. Local officers enforce it with fines of up to $250, then $1,000. It creates no license.

San Francisco's Department of Public Health also requires a health permit for an overnight kennel or boarding facility. That permit can apply only to the 41 listings with a San Francisco address; the other 115 sit in places whose local rules we did not research. We joined no permit record to any facility.

The market here is the counties of the Census metro area plus places within 30 miles of downtown: 156 listings, 151 of them dedicated boarding and daycare facilities, from Novato to Brentwood and Pescadero. A hundred and thirty publish a website, and we reached and reviewed 117. Disclosure shares below use those 117, or 116 for evaluations.

That written statement of staff hours is the cleanest test of what reaches a web page. Twenty-three of the 117 sites say a person is on site overnight, 19.7 percent against 13.7 in Dallas and 20.9 in Chicago. None says nobody is. High Tail Hotel puts it simply: “At least one of our staff members spends the night every night.” The Ranch Pet Resort & Spa in Livermore says “our owner lives on the premises.” PupTown Dog Daycare & Boarding in San Leandro gives the most candid answer in the market: “We do have an overnight attendant, except when someone calls in for PTO.” Three of the 23 are Wag Hotels listings sharing one sentence. The other 94 are silent, which Chapter 11 permits: the answer is owed on paper before boarding, not online.

Curators set aside eight passages that sounded like an overnight answer and were not. Dogpile Dogs, Expert Pet and Walking Buddies advertise 24/7 care, and five PetSmart Doggie Day Camp listings promise on-site care, without saying a person is in the building at night. Google lists 13 listings as open 24 hours; only three of them say on their own site that staff stay the night.

Supervision numbers are close to absent. One site of 117 publishes a staff-to-dog ratio: Dogwalks, at “only 6 to 8 dogs per handler at daycare”, a daytime figure. Citizen Canine and Barkonia advertise a high or optimal ratio and never give it. Three publish a playgroup cap. Waggers keeps “no more than 5 dogs in any given group”, East Bay Paws takes “up to 6 dogs for day care at any given time”, and The Dog Social Club Cooperative allows up to 17, adding that “our busiest and youngest groups often have 12 or fewer dogs together.” Two publish a capacity: Hang Around Hound (“Our maximum number is 30”) and A Girl And Your Dog Ranch (“up to 12 dogs very comfortably”). Two publish an incident policy, and both end in a phone call: Dogpile Dogs says “We will notify you immediately.”

Twenty-nine describe a play model: 16 open play all day, ten open play with built-in rest, and three a structured rotation, those being Metro Dog and the two Pet Camp campuses. Bark To Basics states the dissent: “Many veterinarians have expressed concern about all day play, and we agree.” Eighteen say how long a boarded dog spends out of its room, and the answers do not compare. They run from 20 minutes of solo activity at Shamrock Ranch Kennels’ basic rate to Metro Dog’s “in social company 24 hours a day”, and five are PetSmart listings sharing one line. Twenty-nine offer an option for a dog that cannot do group play; nine charge extra, and at Brentwood Pet Resort it is the only option: “Outside playtime is performed one on one with a resort attendant”.

Health screening is where operators say most. Sixty-four publish a vaccination list, 54.7 percent against 47.0 in Dallas and 43.4 in Chicago. All 64 require rabies, and 63 require distemper and Bordetella; the exception, RUFF 'N READY, publishes a rabies rule only: “CURRENT RABIES CERTIFICATE REQUIRED”. Canine influenza splits the market: 18 require it, 17 recommend it, and 29 lists leave it out. Leptospirosis is required by seven. Seven give a Bordetella window, from three days at the Wag Hotels to seven at The Pawington. Forty-eight say they check records rather than take an owner’s word. Three require a fecal test (Fluffy Doggy Hotel, Tails of Terra Linda Pet Resort and AlphaDog Lodging), 2.6 percent against 20.6 in Chicago.

Forty-nine publish a spay and neuter policy. Thirty-seven require it outright and ten only for group play. Paw Vivant takes intact dogs with “A $15/day special care fee”, and Bridewell Hilltop Boarding Kennels & Cattery lists accommodations for “Un-neutered males and females in season”. Where an age is given it runs from six months to Hang Around Hound’s outer limit: “all dogs MUST be altered by 24 months of age.” Fifty of 116 address a first-visit evaluation. Forty-six require one, 18 of those free, two require it for some dogs, and two say no, both Pet Camp: “Pet Camp does not require a temperament test for new campers.” Twenty publish a tour policy and none refuse; eleven welcome drop-ins.

The fire rule in Chapter 11 is almost invisible online. Four sites mention fire protection: Pet Camp’s Main Campground, Citizen Canine, Wunderbar’s Pet Hotel and North Main Pet Lodge, which says “The entire facility is fire sprinkled”. The duty falls on the building, not the website.

San Francisco has the highest median published boarding rate of the 31 markets in the index. Forty-five of the 156 listings publish an overnight rate, 34.6 percent of the 130 websites our pricing crawler reached, against 37.0 in Dallas and 39.9 in Chicago. The median is $85 a night, with the middle half between $65 and $100, a spread of 1.54x. Dallas sits at $50, Chicago at $60 and Los Angeles at $74. Thirty-nine publish a daycare rate, median $54. The city itself costs more: the 15 priced facilities at a San Francisco address have a median of $100, the 30 elsewhere $76.50. Published minimums run from $30 at Farrington Kennels in Martinez to $170 at Pet Camp Ranger Station.

One structural caveat belongs on every count. Twenty-six of the 156 listings share a website with at least one other listing, across ten sites. PetSmart accounts for seven (five Doggie Day Camps and two PetsHotels), Camp Bow Wow for four and Wag Hotels for three. Five more operators list two locations against one site, and Bark Avenue is one business listed twice. A count of sites is not a count of decisions.

None of this is a ranking and none of it is a judgment, and it is not a compliance check. California requires the operator to put staff hours, observation practice and the daily schedule in front of the customer before boarding; it does not require a web page, and an empty field here means only that nothing was published on a page we could read on 19 October 2026. What the index measures is narrower: which of these facts you can find out before you pick up the phone.