Puppy Rental & 10 Crucial Things to Know (+ How-To & Cost)
Surprisingly, if you can’t commit to full dog ownership, you can rent a cute puppy for a limited time to provide puppy snuggles and play.
1. Who Rents Out Puppies?
Some forward-thinking rescue shelters will place puppies in carefully vetted foster homes, and short-term puppy rentals are an expansion of that operation.
You pay to enjoy puppy companionship, and the shelter gains funds, savings on puppy care, and the possibility that you will fall in love with the cuddly bundle of fur and opt for full-time ownership.
You can also rent a puppy (or puppies) for corporate events and parties from specialist businesses providing animal interaction for a fee.
Another source of part-time puppy rentals is a puppy sharing app where you can borrow a puppy from a local pet owner.
2. Why Would Someone Rent Out Their Puppy?
People and organizations offer puppies for rent for many reasons:
Profit
If you regard a puppy as a potential commodity that other people are willing to pay money to enjoy, then you can have a business renting out puppies.
The profit motive is not evil if the puppy welfare is front and center of the operation’s mind.
Companies rise to meet a market need, and renting puppies is only one of many businesses that use animals – you can book a hawk or a gaggle of geese.
Renting animals for events, parties, or work in advertising is not new.
That cute puppy advertising soft toilet paper is a puppy rental from a business specializing in sourcing puppies.
Puppy Welfare
Finding homes for unwanted litters and abandoned puppies is challenging.
Renting a puppy to a potential puppy owner gives a puppy the experience of positive human interaction, entertainment, and the possibility of a forever home.
Human Welfare
Interacting with puppies is excellent for human health.
Plenty of scientific studies shows positive health benefits from cuddling a cute puppy for a short time.
Students living away from home, retirees in sheltered accommodation, orphanages, and schools all contain people who benefit from time with a puppy.
Renting puppies to provide therapy may be a more cost-effective way of improving people’s mental health than extensive medical interventions.
Puppy therapy works, and it doesn’t have unpleasant side effects.
3. Why Rent a Puppy?
Puppies are cute, and most people enjoy spending time with a puppy, but why rent instead of buying?
Trial Run for Ownership
Taking on a puppy for life may be a scary prospect if you have no experience looking after a puppy.
Renting a puppy allows you to experience puppy ownership without commitment.
Plus, if you rent a puppy for a couple of hours, you will usually have an experienced puppy wrangler available to clean up any mess and help you cope.
See How Your Kids React
If your kids apply pressure for a puppy of their own, but you think this is a fad, then a puppy rental may sort out your kids’ feelings.
You can watch how your children respond to the puppy and if they can meet its needs with patience and kindness.
A puppy play date where you can gauge how the youngest family members will treat a puppy can help you decide if bringing a puppy into your home is a viable option.
You Can’t Have a Pet
Many people live in circumstances where owning a dog is impossible because of work commitments or the landlord’s rules.
Renting a puppy can provide canine companionship and satisfy your need to spend time outdoors or inside with a puppy.
Interacting regularly with a puppy benefits your mental and physical health, and you may prefer renting a puppy for a weekend walk in the park rather than walking alone.
Star of the Party
If you host a party for kids or adults, you may opt to provide entertainment or activities.
The number and type of activities available to make your party enjoyable are immense, and puppy rental is one of them.
Typically, the puppy management company will remain to ensure that the puppies are happy and supervised for a party.
The staff will clean up after the puppies, ensure they behave and get appropriate naps as needed during the day.
Photoshoot
You may want a puppy to enhance your photoshoot to give you appealing pictures on your website, Facebook pages, Instagram feed, or sale brochure for business or personal reasons.
Renting a puppy for a photoshoot makes sense.
Video and Films
Moviemakers and marketers hire puppies and their wranglers (the person who gets the puppy to act) to play a role in their productions.
Puppy welfare is carefully regulated; the puppy has a fun time doing what comes naturally without stress.
Corporate Events
Imagine a conference filled with accountants and solicitors.
What will encourage you to seek out an area?
Attracting an audience or encouraging interaction can involve hiring magicians and artists or providing a puppy for cuddles and a selfie.
If there is a puppy in the room, you can guarantee to attract the attention of most attendees at some stage because people love puppies.
Mood Enhancer
Renting a puppy is a healthier way of boosting your mood.
If you’ve been through a stressful time, you may consider providing yourself with some puppy therapy.
Time with a puppy can lower your blood pressure and generally uplift your spirits.
4. Does Renting Out Damage Puppies?
In theory, a puppy needs a stable, loving home to thrive, and you may think that putting a puppy out to rent is destabilizing for the puppy’s mental and physical health.
When a shelter rents out a puppy, the aim is to potentially match a puppy to a forever home and minimize the impact of living in a cage.
The shelter has a keen overview of the puppy’s long-term health and believes the best outcome is the potential for a loving home.
When a business rents out puppies for parties, corporate events, and marketing, the aim is to satisfy the client with a cute, well-behaved puppy.
However, the puppies always have a responsible handler available to them.
Puppies for these roles come from the most sociable and friendly breeds. The puppies have a stable relationship and don’t work every day.
Most states have extensive legal protections for working puppies covering every aspect of their health and happiness.
Plus, party puppies come as a pack with strong social bonds.
5. Can You Get Your Temporary Puppy Fix for Free?
If you don’t like the idea of renting a puppy, but you do want to spend some quality time on a semi-regular basis with puppies, then you have a few options:
- Volunteer at a shelter – plenty of roles available, from fostering to dog walking.
- Hire out as a puppy sitter – enjoy puppy action and get paid for it.
- Share someone’s puppy – some Apps help put puppy owners and people looking for some puppy contact in touch with each other.
Most of these options are for adults; if you want your children to benefit from some free puppy attention, you need to make friends with local puppy owners.
Otherwise, you can rent a puppy for them.
6. How Do You Rent a Puppy?
How to rent a puppy depends on the availability and your reasons for renting a puppy.
Look for a Puppy Renter
A quick online search will reveal if there is a business or a shelter in your area currently renting puppies for parties, corporate events, and other reasons.
If you live in an area with an established puppy rental business, then contact them, explain your needs, and ask for a quote – like hiring any other entertainer.
What If No One Advertises Puppy Rental?
Simply because no one is advertising a service doesn’t mean you can’t rent a puppy for a day, a party, a photoshoot, or a weekend.
Potential sources of a puppy for rent are:
- Local animal shelters.
- Local breeders.
- Local puppy owners.
Your local animal shelter may not be in the business of loaning their puppies, but it is worth suggesting the idea to them.
Possible ways to gain agreement are to buy the necessary equipment to keep the puppies safe and happy while renting and donating the equipment (plus a fee) to the shelter.
Your actions may kick start a potential income stream for your local shelter and help them with the mission of rehoming puppies in need of a second chance.
A local breeder with a litter at the appropriate age may be happy to earn a fee showcasing their cute puppies to potential future buyers.
If the breeder doesn’t have a current litter available, you can ask the breeder to pass your contact details to new puppy owners.
Some areas have puppy owners willing to share their puppy (a share my puppy App), or you can advertise locally for a puppy owner ready to rent out their puppy, making it clear that the puppy will be safe and happy.
In practice, anyone renting out a puppy for a party or event will accompany the puppy to safeguard its welfare.
A shelter renting out a puppy for a day or a weekend to an individual will carry out due diligence checks to determine suitability.
Photoshoots and Filming
Companies supplying animals for films, videos, and photos are professionals. Effectively these companies recruit suitable puppies to meet the client’s brief.
These puppies may arrive with training or, for young puppies, an expectation that you allow the puppy to act naturally and use the best bits caught by the camera.
Modern editing techniques may transform the images into startling or amazing scenes.
These puppies will cost more because regulation demands the best welfare for puppies as models and actors.
7. Can You Hire a Specific Puppy Breed?
Typically, you get a choice of available puppies to rent for a party rather than choosing a specific breed.
If you need a specific breed for your corporate event, marketing, or another business purpose, you can request a specific breed, and the agent will try to source a puppy to meet the brief.
You will pay considerably more to rent an expensive puppy breed than a cute, fluffy, and readily available breed.
8. How Much Does It Cost to Rent a Puppy?
The expense involved in renting a puppy depends on puppy availability and demand.
A shelter looking to place puppies for adoption may charge a more affordable fee of around $100 per day.
A business is likely to charge considerably more because you need to cover staff costs, transport fees, and a hire charge.
For half a day, expect to pay roughly the amount to hire a professional entertainer – an average of $500, but you can pay a bit less or considerably more.
A puppy actor for your next marketing campaign may cost $1,000 per day.
9. What Do You Need to Do for the Puppy?
Suppose you rent a puppy for a party or a photoshoot.
In that case, the puppy handler will bring all necessary equipment and food and supervision to safeguard the puppy’s health and wellbeing.
If you rent a puppy for a day, weekend, or week to experience the joy of puppy ownership, you will receive a training session and care instructions before clearance to look after the puppy.
This type of rental agreement may supply the food (to avoid upsetting the puppy’s digestion), or you will get a detailed list of routines and requirements.
The puppy needs regular small meals, access to water, and plenty of naptimes during the day.
10. What If You Want to Keep the Puppy?
If you rent a puppy from a shelter, then adopting the puppy as a permanent addition to your home is straightforward.
If you hire a puppy from a business, you may be able to negotiate to buy the puppy. As a cute young animal, a puppy’s working life is less than twelve months.
A professional company may be training the puppy to move onto a career as a working dog with one of the services or star as a dog actor.
Alternatively, the company may have a waiting list of potential owners for puppies retiring from their career as party animals.
Conclusion
Most shelters offer a fostering option for a few weeks for potential owners with no commitment to take the puppy at the end of the session.
Most shelters have a team of volunteer fosterers who help socialize puppies before placing them with future owners.
Organizations providing assistance dogs use a team of puppy foster parents to care for the puppies until the puppy can undergo training. But these arrangements last for up to two years.
Renting a puppy for a party or a weekend is a relatively new concept, and few businesses are available to meet this need. Access to rental puppies depends on local availability.
Renting a puppy for marketing or filming purposes is a recognized business with specialist animal consultants sourcing the best puppy for their clients.
You can rent a puppy for your party or event, but you may need to get creative.