Bob

Taking care of other people’s best friends means living with the chilling prospect of emergencies. Dog walking emergencies can come in all shapes and sizes, from a vehicle break down to a sprained ankle to potentially traumatic accidents. Out on a trail, an otherwise reliable dog takes off chasing an unknown scent and is lost or hit by a car. Two dogs who normally play well together get into a nasty fight. A dog you are walking swallows a rock or other non-edible item whole. All are scenarios that make dog walkers sweat. But failing to consider and prepare for accidents makes them more likely and will only aggravate an already bad situation if it happens.

Your clients, the dogs, your staff, yourself—everyone is better served by a 3 P’s approach—taking deliberate care to prevent emergencies, planning for their eventuality (life does happen, after all), and having set protocols to follow for each type of emergency to stave off panic and keep things under control.

Emergency Prevention
Preventing emergencies is much easier than dealing with them. And preventing emergencies is really a matter of following good dog walking practices:

Set the tone. A dog who is calm and focused on you is less likely to be involved in an emergency. Consistently asking your charges sit to greet you and leash up, sit and wait at doorways and curbs, walk nicely on a loose leash instead of pulling, etc. will make your days both easier and safer.

Walk dogs, don’t socialize them. You can’t bite what you’re not near enough to reach. Live beings—both humans and other dogs—are unpredictable. Use strong recalls and focus techniques (like “Let’s go!” or “Watch me!”) to keep dogs interacting with you instead of strangers or dogs you don’t know. When appropriate, pull over to the side for a focused sit-stay to allow others to pass. Politely decline requests to pet your dogs, even if you know them to be friendly. They may well be, but every dog has her limits and you never know when a well-meaning but blundering dog lover will find one of them.

Practice good screening and group composition. Choosing the right dogs—and matching them carefully if you’re a group walker—can go a long way toward avoiding fights and other emergencies. Always decline dogs with behavioral challenges that are beyond your skill and knowledge set, and avoid more than one challenging dog (we call them project dogs) per group, at most.

Actively monitor and interrupt. When walking groups, interrupt play or other interactions before they tip into conflict. Frequent obedience breaks (such as practicing circle stay pull-overs), and calling dogs (recall off leash or “Let’s go!” on leash) to break up potentially heated interactions, keeps things light and fun. Think of it a bit like monitoring a group of children—it’s best to initiate a break in play before a squabble breaks out.

Keep up on vehicle maintenance. The only thing worse than your car breaking down is your car breaking down with dogs in it! Maintain roadside assistance, schedule routine maintenance, and head to the shop at the first sign of trouble. Treat your vehicle like the key business investment and tool it is.

Watch the temperature. NEVER leave dogs in your car other than to pick up other dogs. Keep your keys with you, and the windows cracked. If you live in a particularly warm area, outfit your windows with dog-proof screens that keep dogs in, hands out, and air flowing.

Use proper equipment. To avoid a startled dog breaking free from you, secure leashes to head harnesses, body harnesses, or martingale-style anti-slip collars. Never use flexi-leashes, as they are too easily pulled out of your hand by a bolting dog, and can also cause serious injury to you and the dogs you walk. Be sure all dogs wear a large tag with your cell number to expedite a quick reunion with a lost dog.

Emergency Planning
Being prepared keeps emergencies contained when they do happen. Better a small emergency than one that blooms into a crisis.

Carry a 1^st aid kit—and know how to use it. Keep a full kit in your vehicle and a small kit on your person as you walk. Visit DogSafe or PetTech websites for canine 1^st aid kit information and to look for 1^st aid classes if you are not already certified.

Always have client contact information on hand. You should never have to rummage frantically through your vehicle for your phone list or, perish the thought, go home to get it. Keep up-to-date, well-organized client contact details in your car or phone at all times, and require any staff to do so as well.

Program emergency vet phone numbers into your phone. Write down or program into a work phone emergency directions to the closest vets from your most-used trails or the neighborhoods you service and keep them in any car ever used to transport dogs. Make sure all staff members know where to find the directions and understand them. Even if you work solo and you know the directions well, have them pre-programmed into your phone or GPS. When a crisis hits, it’s all too easy to forget one’s own name, let alone how to get to the veterinary hospital.

Get permission to help in writing. Your client service contract should clearly spell out what’s expected of you in an emergency.

1. Have clients give you permission to seek emergency treatment and agree to cover the cost.
2. Have clients specify whether there’s a cap on the cost they will accept. (Don’t assume everyone shares your willingness to take out a second mortgage to pay for surgery.)
3. Have clients specify whether they authorize you to take the dog to whichever vet or animal hospital is closest. In other words, they want you to exercise discretion in getting their dog the best, fastest care. Otherwise, they may refuse to pay because you didn’t use their vet.
4. Have clients state their wishes with regards to resuscitative care. For example, some clients may not wish to have senior dogs resuscitated.

Recruit an emergency assistant. One way to prevent panic in an emergency is to have a person to call who can help you keep calm and assist with urgent tasks. Don’t just make a mental list of cool-headed friends, though. Your emergency assistant must know and agree to his or her new designation, and the two of you should set up a protocol for such calls. Maybe it’s her job to meet you at the vet clinic and provide general support. Maybe she is the one who takes the other dogs home. Maybe she finishes your walking stops for the day. Whatever it is, you always know that someone can come to your aid. You and a fellow dog pro can do this for each other, or you can ask a friend who works from home or has a flexible office schedule.

Take your emergency assistant out with you on your regular rounds so she can meet all the dogs. Then practice your emergency protocol with your assistant to make sure everything goes as planned when you really need it to.

Emergency Protocols
Knowing what to do in an emergency will help keep you calm. And being calm will allow you to more effectively handle whatever situation comes your way.

At the Dog Walking Academy we provide step-by-step protocols for handling all manner of emergencies, including vehicle breakdowns, you being injured or becoming ill during a walk, a dog in your car biting another dog or person, and losing a dog. We encourage our grads to carry these protocols with them, giving them a clear path forward should panic or shock set in. If you don’t have specific emergency protocols, take some time to develop them—or come join us for the Dog Walking Academy.

Secure dogs and call your emergency assistant. Regardless of the situation, one important step in any protocol when walking groups is to secure all dogs to keep the situation from escalating. The last thing you need while dealing with an injured dog or sprained ankle is for another one to take himself off on an adventure. Get everyone safely leashed if they aren’t already, then call your emergency assistant. In most protocols, your emergency assistant is the first call you’ll make. Knowing someone is in your corner and on the way to help can do a lot to bring calm, no matter the emergency.

Communicate with the client. Call the client when you have calmed down, not before. Also hold off until you know the precise nature of the damage. Sprained leg or amputation? Eye patch for a few days or blindness? Best to find out before you make the dreaded call. When you do, speak in a calm, confident tone. A distressed owner needs to know a professional is in charge of the crisis. Clearly state whether everything is handled and this is just a courtesy call to let the client know, or whether some action on her part is required.

With any kind of mishap, even if everything turned out fine, the best policy is to tell the client. Some clients might not care that their dog was missing for 20 minutes on a deer-chasing adventure, or that he got into a scuffle in which no one was hurt, but that risk is preferable to a client who hears it from someone else and is outraged at your failure to tell her about the dramatic event, regardless of the outcome. And if running off or scuffles become a trend, your client may be angry to learn something’s been brewing and wonder why you didn’t let her know sooner.

Take responsibility as appropriate—you are an adult and a professional. But don’t verbally rub sand in your hair, don’t heap blame on yourself, and don’t ever tell the client they ought to sue you. Accidents happen. Dogs are not appliances.

Depending on the situation, here is a possible strategy for the conversation: describe in a straightforward manner exactly what happened, share all the steps you took to handle the situation, give a report of the current status of the dog, and share anything you plan to do (if relevant) in the way of policy or process changes to avoid something similar happening in the future. Stress your concern for the dog’s and the client’s well-being, and ask if there’s anything else you can do to be of support at this particular moment.

Emergency Follow-up
If the worst happens and a dog is seriously injured or killed while under your care, let your other clients know in writing. Bad news travels fast and if you are not the one to tell them, they may think you’re trying to hide the episode. You have to protect your business and your brand, and honesty is the best policy.

The letter should include any policy changes you are making to prevent the same thing happening again. Be thoughtful about protecting anonymity; don’t hang clients out to dry. If a dog is expelled, for example, don’t name that dog. If a dog is killed, find out whether the owner wants the dog named or not. Some do, some don’t. But don’t name the dog who killed, just say he was expelled.

Openness is the best policy about smaller incidents, too. A scuffle in a walking group that results in a dog needing a couple of stitches, for example, should also be communicated. Doing so breeds confidence, prevents rumors from festering and growing, and demystifies normal canine behavior. Emphasize what is being done about the problem: “We had another tiff over tennis balls today, so we have decided not to bring them to the beach with us anymore.” Hopefully, you are communicating with your clients every week anyway (highlights from Fido’s week, etc.), so bad news isn’t the only news they get.

(Of course, if scuffles happen more than once in a blue moon, something is wrong. Screening procedures and staff training are the first places to look for a possible issue.)

Don’t fret
If you generally run a strong business, if you take good care of dogs and of people, if you handle a crisis with responsibility and grace, it’s rare to lose clients over injury incidents. Be open and honest, be calm, and face the situation down—it can happen to anyone.

Think of a three-legged stool. It stands—and supports your weight—only because each leg has been built to do its part; it’s perfectly balanced. Remove, or even shorten, just one leg and the stool topples. Like the stool, a balanced marketing plan requires three legs. Unfortunately, it’s rare to see a dog business marketing plan that gives careful attention to all three.

More often dog walking businesses put emphasis in one area, ignoring or underserving the others. Sometimes the focus is on marketing to referral sources, sometimes on getting out in front of the general public of potential clients, but most often on staying in touch with current and past clients. But the most powerful marketing plans balance a bit of all three, because each has a specific role to play in the success of your dog walking business.

Referral Sources
Referral sources—other dog professionals who send clients your way— are the most critical audience as you start out, and they’re what will feed your business for long-term sustainability as well. Get a few good referral sources on your side and your business will build much more quickly.

Referral sources such as veterinarians, dog trainers, dog daycares, pet sitters, and pet supply stores tend to come into contact with people precisely when they need your services the most. Potential clients may complain to a veterinarian or dog trainer about their dog’s destructive or hyper behavior, be told by a daycare that their dog isn’t a good fit for group play, or worry out loud to a pet sitter or store clerk about an overly long workday. You want fellow dog pros to have your name on the tips of their tongues when this happens.

When courting referral sources, think about what you might do for their businesses, rather than what you’re hoping they’ll do for yours. For example, ask any potential referral source for 10 minutes to interview them for an article about their business in your newsletter. Invite dog trainers and pet sitters out to coffee or lunch. Ask trainers what you can do to help reinforce their training work on your walks. Surprise a vet clinic or dog daycare with a pizza lunch on a busy day. Starting relationships this way allows you to avoid the discomfort of cold requests for referrals. And referrals will follow if you make other dog pros’ lives easier and find ways to show them your expertise and professionalism.

Potential Clients
Marketing to potential clients is about building your brand awareness and recognition. It takes time for people to become actively aware of a new business or service, so start early and be consistent. Success here requires staying in front of people so they’re already aware of you and know just who to go to when they decide it’s time to hire a dog walker. So the more marketing you do, the more effect it will have.

Don’t confuse marketing to potential clients with marketing to the general public. The more you narrow your focus, the less money and effort you’ll need to spend on your marketing, and the more successful returns you’ll see. You really don’t want all people with dogs to call you anyway. For one thing, you only want people within your service area. Make that too broad and you’ll spend more time driving than walking. And there’s no point in marketing your services to people who can’t afford them, so economic factors come into play as well.

You may wish to further narrow your focus to specific sub-culture groups. For example, you might tailor your message to busy families. Maybe you want to appeal to the green-minded in your community. Or to the gay community or to churchgoers. It’s not necessary to focus your audience in this way, but the more specific you are, the easier it will be to both tailor your message and target your marketing efforts.

Writing articles for the local paper, distributing a printed newsletter, providing informational fliers (Why Hire a Professional Dog Walker, for example, or 5 Things To Ask Before You Hire a Dog Walker) to local dog businesses, distributing custom branded trading cards for the dogs you walk instead of business cards, wearing logo clothing when out walking—these are just a few examples of public marketing projects you might employ.

Current And Past Clients
Retention marketing is key to longevity. This should be the smallest portion of your marketing plan as you start out, because you have few people to keep in contact with at first, but should grow in importance as your business grows. You’ll spend time and resources landing your clients; it makes no sense not to keep them in your marketing loop. This is not only good customer service, it’s also how you build word of mouth over time. Get enough happy clients talking and you’ll end up with more happy clients.

That said, if you’re just getting started and you’ve put all your weight on this leg of the stool, back off a bit and make sure you stabilize the referral and public legs of your marketing plan—you have to get clients first before you retain them!

E-mail newsletters, blogs, and social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram are the most common forms of retention marketing for dog walkers. These tools allow you to show your current clients what you do for them every day. Seeing their dogs out having fun, and getting daily or weekly reports from you via images or anecdotes, cements brand loyalty. It also gives them something to pass on to friends, family, and coworkers—inadvertently spreading the word about your dog walking service.

Building Your Sturdy Marketing Plan
Take a few minutes to consider the marketing you’re currently doing. Which leg of the stool does each project fall under? Given the stage your business is in, which legs could use some attention? Achieving the right marketing balance maximizes your efforts and helps you reach your goals that much faster.