animal technician jobs

About The Role

Pawsome Careers - Make Every Day Meaningful

Come and join us as a proactive and purpose‑led Dog Wellbeing Technician and be part of something life‑changing - helping people with sight loss live the life they choose.

As a Dog Wellbeing Technician at Guide Dogs, you’ll play a vital role in ensuring the highest standards of dog health, wellbeing and specialist care. The Dog Wellbeing Technician will be an expert in canine wellbeing and husbandry, with strong knowledge of dog health, behaviour, welfare standards and positive handling techniques. You’ll use your expertise to make informed decisions, identify and escalate health concerns, and coach colleagues and volunteers in best practice dog care. Our Dog Wellbeing Technicians play a huge part in ensuring everything we do enables us to deliver on our purpose and exceed expectations.

Based at our Belfast office, this is a full-time role working 35 hours per week. You will work alongside one other Dog Tech, Monday to Friday, on a rota that covers the hours between 8am and 6pm. There is an element of lone working in the role, and other duties can include welcoming visitors in our reception area and money handling.

Key Responsibilities

• Responsible for managing the care of a group of dogs in a dog accommodation area, ensuring their routine husbandry needs are met.
• Work in line with national dog wellbeing practices and procedures, including the provision of specialist health care.
• Monitor and maximise the wellbeing of dogs. Identify health concerns, make appropriate decisions and escalate in a timely manner.
• Support the development and maintenance of the dog's behaviour using current guide dogs handling techniques.
• Lead and support volunteers in dog wellbeing and fostering to complete their role and tasks to the best of their ability. Provide technical input to support their preparation, performance and development.
• Maintain accurate and up to date records. Interpret health data and identify concerns/trends within the local dog population.
• Transport dogs across the region for health-related appointments with internal and external bodies.

You

You’ll have a person‑centred, expert and optimistic approach to your work, grounded in a strong understanding of animal wellbeing and dog care principles. You’ll enjoy working in a kennel and dog accommodation environment, supporting colleagues and volunteers, with a dedicated focus on dog health, wellbeing, behaviour and positive handling techniques, whilst being committed to delivering the highest standards of care. You’ll act with integrity and honesty in everything you do.

Skills and Competencies

• A qualification in animal care, experience or equivalent relevant work-based experience.
• Able to undertake physical demands of the role, walking distances unaided and able to handle and walk with a range of dog breeds, ages, sizes and temperaments.
• Able to meet the travel requirements of the role which involves transporting dogs on a regular basis. In the absence of a full valid UK Driving License, you will be expected to demonstrate how you will fulfil this aspect of the role via alternative means.
• Experience of working in a kennel type environment - paid employment or voluntary.
• Experience of supporting a customer serving based organisation.
• Proven understanding of the core principles of animal wellbeing.
• Demonstrable basic understanding of health and safety and safeguarding.
• Proven understanding of dog care principles and health conditions.

Benefits

We wouldn’t be able to change the lives of people with sight loss without our people. That’s why it’s important for us to provide a variety of benefits that reward our colleagues in a way that suits them and recognises the hard work and contribution that they make.

• 26 days annual leave. After three years of continuous employment, this increases to 28 days plus bank holidays.
• Real Living Wage Employer
• Flex pot - equal to a proportion of your annual salary to use on our wide variety of flexible benefits
• The option to buy and sell annual leave
• Discounts and cash-back scheme
• Excellent pension scheme (We will match your pension contributions plus 2% up to a maximum of 9% employer contribution)
• And lots more!

For high volumes of applications, we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than advertised.

About Us

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Behind Every Guide Dog Is Someone Like You - We’re passionate about creating an inclusive workplace that celebrates and values diversity. Bring your whole self to work regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. We don’t want you to ‘fit’ our culture, we want you to enrich it.

How to apply

Further details on the full role are attached below. When you are ready to apply, submit an online application form via this page. Please note - If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK via our digital ID checking supplier. We cannot offer visa sponsorship at this time.

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description. You will also be asked to complete a few job-specific questions, so please be prepared to write your answers to these questions.

If you choose to use AI tools to assist in completing your application, please use them appropriately. We value authenticity. If you want to stand out, using a generic AI-generated response isn’t going to separate you from the crowd. This is your time to shine and showcase your unique skills, personality, and thought processes! You can find our full statement on the use of AI to complete applications on our careers website.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about the role before applying, or require any accessibility support to apply, our friendly recruitment team is ready and waiting to help. Call them on 0118 3540345 or drop an email to recruitment@guidedogs.org.uk.

Safer recruitment

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If you are applying for a disclosure role, please note that you will be required to undergo an enhanced DBS check and sign up to the DBS update service.

At Guide Dogs, we believe in fair and equitable hiring practices. A criminal record will not automatically disqualify an applicant from consideration for a position. Each case will be evaluated individually. We encourage all candidates to disclose relevant information, and we assure you that it will be handled confidentially and fairly.