Dog Kennel Simulator starts you with a small kennel, a budget and three dogs. This guide walks through the first days: what you begin with, what the tutorial asks you to do, and how to keep your dogs healthy while the kennel grows.
Pick your three starter dogs
A new game starts with $10,000 and 25 medals. Before you play, you pick three dogs one at a time: an adult, a junior and a puppy. Each pick offers four candidates — a male and a female Beagle and a male and a female Labrador, in random order.
The adult is ready to compete and breed straight away, while the puppy has the most growing ahead of it. Before you pair two dogs, read how breeding works.
New dogs need a day to settle in
Every dog that joins your kennel — your three starters and every dog you buy — spends its first 24 hours adapting. For the first 4 hours its stats count at 80%, and they then recover by 1% an hour. While it is adapting it also sells for 10% less.
Follow the tutorial
The tutorial is a chain of 15 steps, shown one at a time. Early steps pay money — up to $400 for a step — and later steps pay 5 or 10 medals.
- Feed a dog, then walk a dog, then feed everyone.
- Start a training session, visit the shop, and wait for the training to finish.
- Enter a competition.
- Buy 5 kg each of Economy, Premium and Super feed.
- Expand the food tank, upgrade the kennel and hire a caretaker.
- Set a feeding schedule and breed your dogs.
Keep every dog fed and walked
Hunger and walk need both rise over time, and 60 is the line to watch. While either is at 60 or above, the dog loses 1 health per hour for each, and its stats build up a temporary penalty. Once it is fed and walked again, health recovers by 0.5 per hour for each and the penalty is paid back three times as fast as it built up.
Feed comes from the food tank. Economy feed costs $25 per kg, Premium $55 and Super $90.
Advice: feed and walk before anything else each session — a dog that drops to low health can be confiscated.
Start training
Training raises one stat at a time. A session costs $5 for a level 1 dog, plus $2 for each level above that. It also costs 25 energy and adds 15 hunger and 10 walk need, so check your dog’s needs first. A session takes 30 minutes of real time, plus up to 30 more the higher the stat already is — counted out of 100, not against the dog’s ceiling.
The training guide explains how much a stat grows and where it stops.
Enter your first competition
Any adult or senior dog with at least 30 energy can enter, as long as it isn’t training or already registered. At kennel level 1 the Local Agility Cup is open; its entry fee is $50. After a 30-minute trip the result comes in, and the top three places win money and medals.
See the competitions guide for how the score is worked out.
Grow the kennel
Upgrading the kennel costs money and needs enough player XP; each level adds dog slots, caretaker slots and sometimes a new breed.
| Level | Dog slots | Caretakers | Upgrade cost | XP needed | New breed | Bank limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 | 0 | — | — | Beagle, Labrador | — |
| 2 | 8 | 1 | $750 | 300 | — | $5,000 |
| 3 | 10 | 2 | $1,500 | 750 | Cocker Spaniel | $5,000 |
| 4 | 14 | 2 | $2,500 | 1,350 | Corgi | $5,000 |
| 5 | 18 | 3 | $4,000 | 2,500 | French Bulldog | $10,000 |
From level 2 you can hire a caretaker, who feeds the dogs on your feeding schedule and walks them 15 minutes later. The first caretaker costs $300 to hire, and wages are $40 a day plus $10 for each caretaker you already employ.
Quick tips
- Keep enough money for feed and wages before you spend on upgrades — the money guide covers every way to earn more.
- Train dogs whose needs are low, so a session doesn’t push them past 60.
- Use your adult starter for the first competition — juniors and puppies can’t enter.
