Dropping your dog off somewhere for the first time is a weirdly big feeling. You hand over the leash, your dog glances back at you, and a little voice in your head goes "are these people actually any good at this?" Fair question. Trouble is, daycare looks easy from the lobby. Wagging tails, a couple of dogs flopped in a sunbeam, somebody friendly behind a desk. None of that tells you what happens at 2 PM when the room is full and a scuffle starts. So let's build a real checklist, the one we'd hand a friend, and we'll answer every point honestly for our own room. If a daycare can't do the same, well, that's your answer.
Do they make you do an evaluation first?
This is the one that catches people off guard, and it's the single best green flag there is. A place that takes any dog, any day, no questions asked, isn't being generous. It's being careless with every dog already inside. Preventive Vet's veterinarian-reviewed guide to choosing a daycare says a responsible facility runs a trial process that pulls your dog's health and behavioural history and watches how it responds to handling by unfamiliar staff, all before that dog ever meets the group. In plain terms, they get to know your dog before they trust it with everyone else's.
That's exactly why every new dog with us starts with a $25 evaluation. It's not a hoop to jump through. It's us figuring out whether your dog loves the chaos of a big playgroup or would be happier in a calmer corner, how it handles being gently leashed by a stranger, where it lands on the energy scale. Skip that step and you've skipped the most important conversation of all.
What's the staff-to-dog ratio, actually?
Ask this one out loud and watch the face. A good answer comes fast, because they've thought about it long before you walked in. Preventive Vet recommends a minimum of one well-trained staff member for every eight to ten dogs, and tighter than that, closer to one per five to seven, for high-energy groups. That's a real number you can hold any Montreal daycare to. Supervision isn't somebody glancing up from a phone now and then. It's enough trained eyes to catch the moment before a moment: the stiff posture, the dog who's clearly had enough, the play that's tipping from fun into too much.
And those eyes need to know what they're looking at. The American Kennel Club's guidance on daycare stresses that staff should be trained to read canine body language and the warning signs of stress, illness, or danger. Reading dogs is a skill, not a vibe. For a local yardstick, the Montreal SPCA holds its own dog-walking volunteers to a documented standard: training in canine body language and biosafety, plus 12 or more hours of handler training before they ever take a dog out. If volunteers walking shelter dogs clear that bar, the people watching your dog all day should too.
Are dogs grouped, or just dumped together?
Here's where a lot of cheaper operations quietly cut corners. One big room, every dog in it, may the strongest tail win. That's not a playgroup. That's a crowd. Preventive Vet is clear that dogs should be matched by energy level, play style, and size, because mismatched sizes and play styles raise the injury risk for the smaller, gentler dogs. A bouncy 70-pound adolescent and a four-pound senior have no business sharing a wrestling match. Ever.
This matters enormously in a city full of condo dogs and apartment-sized breeds. We run a dedicated tiny-dog program for the under-10-pound crowd precisely because the little ones deserve a room where nobody's going to flatten them by accident. When you tour a daycare, ask how they split the groups. If the answer is some version of "they all just figure it out," picture your dog as the smallest one in there, and trust your gut.
What's the vaccine policy, and do they check it?
A daycare with no vaccine requirement is telling on itself. It means the dog before yours walked in without anyone checking either. Montreal adds its own twist here, because no vaccine is legally mandatory in Quebec. The AMVQ confirms it plainly: aucun vaccin n'est actuellement obligatoire au Quebec. So the rules are set by each facility, not the government, which means it's entirely on you to ask every daycare exactly what it requires.
A credible one asks for proof of current core shots, rabies, DHPP, and Bordetella, and increasingly canine influenza and leptospirosis. None of that is overkill. Dog flu is brutally contagious in exactly these settings. The American Veterinary Medical Association notes that virtually all exposed dogs get infected, with about 80% showing symptoms, and it names daycares specifically as a higher-risk setting. The AAHA recently bumped leptospirosis up to core for dogs that go outside, kennels and daycares included. As for Bordetella, a daycare with no rule there is a straight-up red flag, since the AKC notes the kennel cough shot is commonly required every 6 to 12 months precisely because it tears through group settings. We dig into the full picture in our daycare vaccine guide if you want the details, but the checklist version is simple. A good daycare has a written policy and actually checks the records at intake.
Is the space genuinely clean, or just tidy at the front?
Tidy and clean are not the same thing, and dogs can tell the difference faster than we can. The AKC guidance says to check that the space is clean and organized, has secure fencing, and is free of hazards like loose electrical cords, wires, or broken toys. Walk past the cute reception desk and look at the actual play and rest areas. In Quebec, clean floors aren't just nice to have, they track the law. The province's Regulation respecting the safety and welfare of cats and dogs requires that floors, and the lower walls a dog can touch, be non-porous, smooth, washable, and disinfectable, and that shelters get cleaned and disinfected frequently.
That regulation reads like dry legal text until you remember our winters. Slush, salt, wet paws, eight hours of dogs indoors because it's minus twenty out there. Add humid summers and how easily dog flu and kennel cough spread, and air quality, drainage, and real disinfection stop being details. They're the whole reason to visit in person before you book, and to be a little suspicious of any place that won't show you the back room.
Will they be transparent with you?
Everything above comes down to one feeling. Can you ask a hard question and get a straight answer? Good daycares love these questions, because they sorted out the answers long before you walked in. They'll tell you the ratio, walk you through how groups are split, show you where the dogs rest, and verify your records right alongside Montreal's own owner rules: the yearly city dog licence, the 1.85 m leash limit, the harness for dogs 20 kg and up that staff handle every dog under at pickup. A daycare that mirrors those baseline obligations is plugged into the same dog world you live in.
One more thing worth saying, since we get a lot of puppy parents. Early, well-managed social time genuinely matters. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior calls the first three months a puppy's primary socialization window, and the AMVQ notes a vaccine takes up to 10 days to reach full effect, recommending a wait of about 10 days after a puppy's last shot around four months before exposing it to unknown animals. A daycare worth its salt knows that timing cold and won't rush a half-protected baby into a busy room.
Come run the checklist on us
Honestly, the best thing you can do is show up with this list and put us through it. Ask about the ratio. Ask to see the rooms. Ask how Maika, our three-legged Chief Dog Officer, ended up running the place (she earned it). We'd rather you be a little skeptical at the door and completely at ease by pickup. That's the whole job.
Have a peek at our daily care page, browse the full list of services, or start with the $25 evaluation so we can meet your dog properly. You can reach out here, call (514) 778-CLUB, or just come find us in the Village at 1800 Sainte-Catherine St E. Max, our Boston terrier mascot, will greet you at the door like you're the most interesting person he's met all week. He greets everyone that way. He means it every time.