Dog boarding & daycare in Miami

Seven of 34 reached Miami websites say whether a person is in the building overnight — 20.6%, the highest share of any Florida or Texas metro in the index — and Miami-Dade County had a kennel license until the state legislature preempted it out from under the county in 2023.

Miami is a Tier C market, and its licensing history is the most unusual one in Florida so far. Orange County (Orlando) and Hillsborough County (Tampa) still actively register and permit kennels. Miami-Dade did too, once: County Code § 5-13 still says on paper that no one may operate a kennel or pet care center without a Department license, renewed every year by September 30. But Miami-Dade's own Animal Services Department states on its current licensing page that it 'no longer requires licenses for breeders, hobby breeders, guard dog service businesses, kennel operators, mobile groomers, pet care centers and pet dealers,' citing a 2021 state law, Fla. Stat. § 163.211, that preempted local occupational licensing statewide and phased out non-construction local licenses by July 1, 2023. The county's § 5-9 standards of care still apply, and a voluntary 'Certificate of Acknowledgement' program exists, but there is no license to hold and no registrant list to check. A rule can vanish out from under a county the same way it can fail to exist in the first place, and from a dog owner's chair the two look identical.

The index holds 45 Miami listings, 41 with a website. The free crawl reached and was curated against 34 of those in September 2026; seven timed out. Seven of the 34 say whether a person is in the building overnight, the highest share of the five Florida and Texas markets with a number to compare: Miami's 20.6% against Dallas's 13.7% (13 of 95), Chicago's 16.4% (11 of 67), Tampa's 10.5% (6 of 57) and Orlando's 8.9% (5 of 56). Three say yes. freeDOGm is the plainest: '"Is someone really there overnight?" Yes. Every single night. Not on-call. Not "checking in." We have staff on the facility 24/7.' Happy Paws Mia answers the same question with 'your pup is never left unsupervised... we follow a schedule, monitor comfort and health overnight, and check in multiple times,' and Dog Kingdom Miami states it plainly in a list of facility priorities: '24-Hour Doggysitter.' Four say no, and three of the four are one operator: DOG Hotels' Wynwood, Coral Gables and Brickell locations all answer from the same FAQ, 'Will anyone be there overnight? No, your dog will be safe and secure in his/her own private place at night,' backed by an overnight camera managers can monitor remotely. The fourth no, Fit & Go Pets, is just as direct: 'We do not provide overnight supervision. Dogs sleep soundly through the night and start their day early.' The other 27 are silent.

Below that, Miami is close to silent altogether. None of the 34 publishes a staff-to-dog ratio, a maximum group size, or a stated capacity — not even an unquantified claim of a 'low ratio' turned up in any curated or rejected passage. Five publish something the index files as an incident policy, and three of the five are the DOG Hotels chain answering once for three addresses: 'If it's an emergency we will transport him/her to the nearest vet immediately and then call you and/or your emergency contact.' Fit & Go Pets and Doggie VIP Miami give the other two.

Five describe a play model, and they split every direction available: Fit & Go Pets rotates dogs between play and a two-hour indoor nap to 'prevent overstimulation'; freeDOGm advertises 'off-leash all day play, no cages, no restrictions'; Dogtown and Dogtown Brickell, two addresses sharing one site and one FAQ, argue the opposite case — 'Random, directionless play often leads to bad behavior. That is why our trained staff leads curated activities'; and Bear Bunny & Co., a single-family home-boarding operator in Coral Gables, takes only one dog's family at a time and calls it 'One on One play,' free of charge. Three publish a solo-play option — freeDOGm and City Bark Miami charge for it, Bear Bunny & Co. includes it. Seven describe how long a boarded dog is out of its space, from PetSmart's 'twice-daily exercise walks and unlimited potty breaks' to DOG Hotels' accounting of the only time a dog is alone: 'from 7pm to 8am and also for lunch/naptime.'

Admission is where Miami's dedicated operators, not its vets, carry the weight. Twelve of the 34 publish a vaccine list — 35.3%, in line with Dallas (35.8%) and Orlando (35.7%), below Tampa (45.6%). All 12 require rabies, distemper-parvo and Bordetella; none states a position on canine influenza either way, and only freeDOGm requires leptospirosis, alongside an intact-dog cutoff at one year: 'Not neutered dogs over 1 year old will not be accepted.' That silence on influenza and leptospirosis, compared to Tampa and Orlando where several operators explicitly decline or require them, tracks a structural fact about this market: only one of Miami's 45 listings, VCA Knowles Central Animal Hospital, is a veterinary clinic. Orlando's is 28 of 60, Tampa's 27 of 62, Dallas's 36 of 97 — markets where a fecal-test requirement or a leptospirosis mandate usually comes from a vet's own admission form. Miami has almost no vets in its boarding census, and it shows: not one of the 34 requires a fecal test. Nine publish a spay-and-neuter policy: six require it outright, three of those (DOG Hotels' three locations) softening the rule to a $4 daily fee for intact males while still requiring spayed females past seven months. Twelve address a trial or temperament check — two require it free (Fit & Go Pets, Doggie VIP Miami), six require it outright, including So Doggin' Cute LLC, which routes new clients through 'a daycation prior to their first staycation to make sure the dog is a good fit,' and four apply it only to daycare or group play, three of those (DOG Hotels, from one FAQ) splitting the difference exactly as Tampa's Pet Paradise did: required for daycare, 'highly recommended, yet not mandatory' for boarding alone. Five publish a tour policy, two open and three, once more the DOG Hotels chain, admitting 'a full tour is never a guarantee.'

Price is the hardest to find in Miami of any market in the index. Eight of the 41 websites publish an overnight rate, 19.5% — under Dallas (24.7%), Chicago (27.5%), Orlando (27.1%) and well under Tampa (35.0%). The median is $62 a night, above Orlando's $46 and Tampa's $52, below Chicago's $80. Fit & Go Pets prices by weight and length of stay, $65 to $95 a night for a first week, down to $55 for a 20-plus night stay; So Doggin' Cute, a home-boarding operator, is the single highest first-tier rate found, $80 flat. Twelve publish a daycare rate, median $39. One rate came from nowhere else this index has looked: Dog Kingdom Miami's price list is a PDF, not linked from its own daycare or boarding pages, itemizing four suite tiers by weight from $80 to $105 a night.

Two caveats matter more in Miami than in any market curated so far. Ten of the 22 listings with a curated value are three operators answering for six or more addresses — DOG Hotels (Wynwood, Coral Gables, Brickell) shares one chain FAQ for nine of its ten fields, and Dogtown and Dogtown Brickell, two real separate addresses, share one website and identical copy — so read every DOG Hotels and Dogtown share above as one operator's word, repeated. And this crawl surfaced three listings whose evidence could not be trusted at face value, a first for this index: Marietta Doggy Daycare's Google listing carries a Miami address but a website that belongs to a real, unrelated business in Marietta, Georgia, so nothing was curated from it; Paws In The City's domain now serves an unrelated retail site; Miami Dog Spaw & Daycare's now shows only a parked-domain page. All three read as checked-absent because the business's web presence is gone, not because the business is silent.

None of this is a ranking and none of it is a judgment, and in Florida it cannot be a compliance check: there is no state license to hold, and Miami-Dade's own kennel license has been withdrawn by state law, not by any finding about these facilities. An operator who keeps a camera on the overnight room and an operator who staffs it in person both believe they are doing right by the dog, and neither the state nor the county has taken a position between them anymore. What the index measures is narrower: which of these facts you can find out before you pick up the phone.