Here’s a look behind the scenes, to give you a better idea if it’s the right job for you:
- Our Dog walkers work every weekday and in any kind of weather, including blizzards and scorching heat waves.
- We get paid the same amount to walk an ancient, barely mobile teacup dust bunny, as we do a 150 pound armored tank that drinks rocket fuel right before we show up.
- We work when we’re sick, when we are injured, and when we have blisters the size of pancakes.
- We walk dogs for people who don’t tell us they’re home, upstairs, lurking on us and then we embarrass ourselves by singing to their dogs out loud.
- We work for people who are in bed, with their dogs, and get angry when we wake them up as we try to coax their dogs out from underneath the covers.
- We clean crates that have seen atomic bombs of poop go off in them, covering the dogs in turd-shrapnel.
- We work with dogs that scare us sometimes, but still need us to take care of them, so we figure it out.
- We hoard plastic bags (aka plastic gold) and develop a compulsive triple bagging habit at the grocery store.
- We work with dogs that have no training or skills or manners and we do our best to get them and ourselves in and out of the house in one piece.
Can you dig it? Dog walkers deal with all this, because we love being with the dogs.
It’s a privilege to make a living being a dog’s friend.
If you want to be a dog walker:
- You better love hard work and delivering great customer service, as much as you love dogs. You may work with animals, but you are still in the service business.
- You better be trustworthy. Really trustworthy. Never take it for granted how much your clients trust you to always be doing the right thing in their homes and with their pets. Most of your clients will really appreciate you and value your role in their lives. Don’t blow it.
If you can deal with all this stuff, then you’ll get one of the best jobs on the planet.
- You won’t get rich and you will get weird lop-sided muscles in your “leash arm”, but you’ll get to spend every day outside with best tour guides on the planet, getting paid to make them happy.
- It’s a really cool thing to be a dog’s favorite person (aside form their owners, of course).
- It’s just about the best feeling in the world to walk into house after house and get greeted like you’re a rock god. Bad moods evaporate on impact.
- Oh, and get over any weirdness you have about poop. There’s just so much poop involved in being a dog walker. Know this: There will be holes in the poop bags.