Wow. We have three large dogs. We are going on vacation soon, and for a week away it is going to cost us over $500 to board them. That is partly because the kennel has odd ours so they will wind up being there for ten days -- every kennel we've used has had this issue, it seems, they open late, are closed on some weird day in the middle of the week, etc., so the dogs' vacation is always longer than ours.

When we used to have a pet sitter stay here to watch the dogs and our two cats, we paid her $45 a day, the same that our old kennel used to charge (before they raised their rates to about $90 a day for the three dogs). We aren't using her anymore because last time she did not feed our cats.

Boarding the animals always costs us more than whatever we pay for our own hotel. I will never have three dogs again.

(When our neighbors watch the cats, they don't charge. We all trade off cat watching. Dogs are more labor intensive, though.)