Dog Walking

dog walker with 4 dogs on a leash

Dog Walking

Dog Walking Equipment—The Choice Is Yours (Not Your Clients’)

These days we’re swimming in an almost endless choice of collars, harnesses, and other walking equipment options. There are also endless opinions about which is best. But as a professional dog walker, it’s your opinion that matters. While each client may have preferred tools for walking their own dogs, when you’re doing the walking, the equipment you use should be your call… The best equipment is your equipment Your equipment policy doesn’t have to be complicated. We recommend you simply use your own equipment rather than equipment provided by your clients. If a dog you walk wears a …

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Dog Walking Equipment—How To Decide What’s Right For You

To say there’s a new dog walking tool on the market every month these days is only a slight exaggeration. The last ten years have seen an explosion of (often derivative and sometimes innovative) variation in dog walking collars, harnesses, and leashes. As a professional dog walker, how do you decide what to use when walking the dogs entrusted to you? Given how rapidly the options shift these days, this article doesn’t endeavor to list and rate all the available collars, harnesses, leashes, and the like on the market. Rather, our goal is to provide a framework to help you sort through it all …

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Navigating Your Dog Walking Business Through the Coronavirus

We know some of you are already experiencing cancellations and revenue loss due to the Coronavirus and others are bracing for the same. We wanted to share some ideas for navigating your business through this stressful and frightening time. There are precious few solid answers right now. We don’t know for sure when this will end, or how bad it will get before it does. But as with any emergency or crisis, planning a path through will help to minimize the impact—and help calm nerves a bit, too. Here are five things you can take charge of in this time of uncertainty to help your clients and …

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4 Tips To Organize Your Dog Walking Business For Success

Setting yourself up for success—whether at the beginning of a new year or whenever the need to take firmer control strikes—can feel daunting. Where to start? How to begin? If you’re feeling disorganized, less productive than you’d like, frustrated by your business’ slow growth, or dismayed by a work/life balance that is…well, unbalanced, it’s time to reset for your success. Here are 4 concrete steps you can take to make this year a great one… Set some goals These don’t have to be lofty new year’s resolutions, and they shouldn’t be guilt-ridden promises to yourself to “do better” or …

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Getting Organized: Tips for Choosing Your Dog Walking Groups

Which dogs you walk can be the difference between a lovely, relaxing evening reflecting on your good fortune to have the best job in the world, or a jittery one contemplating a prescription for Xanax. The more carefully you choose the dogs you walk, the easier and more enjoyable your job as a dog walker. Your life is made easier by dogs who are compatible with the terrain you walk and the kinds of animals, people, and experiences you’re likely to encounter there. You and the dogs are made safer when walking those whose behaviors are compatible with your skill and knowledge level. And walks …

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Policies Have Consequences: How To Get Dog Walking Clients To Do What You Want

What if you could make the same money you make, or even more, with fewer clients, while also enjoying calmer, easier behavior from the dogs you walk? Oh, and also smooth out your income so you’re no longer bouncing between bountiful months and tight ones? What if, while you’re at it, your dog walking service did more good for dogs and clients, too? Achieving all of this is simply a matter of policy. Good policies are at the heart of all smoothly-run, efficient, sustainable dog walking businesses. Unfortunately, too many dog walkers suffer a lack of strong policies, or a discomfort enforcing …

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Behaviors Have Consequences: How To Get Dogs To Do What You Want

Learning by consequence is about payoff. It’s about getting what we want and avoiding things we don’t like. People work for money; the consequence of sitting behind a desk in a cubicle for 40 hours a week is a paycheck. (Aren’t you glad you chose a different line of work?) Children whine because it often gets them what they want. But a child is less likely to whine if she’s sent to her room each time she tries it. We learn to do what works and to avoid what doesn’t. Dogs are good at learning by consequence, too. As dog walkers, we can use operant conditioning (the principles of learning by …

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Word Of Mouth Marketing for Dog Walkers

Word of mouth is a highly prized and sought-after commodity, and few things are better for building and maintaining a strong dog walking business. Problem is, you need a lot of people talking before WOM reaches an effective tipping point and, sensational media stories aside, that rarely happens magically. Word of mouth must be actively cultivated. Here are 7 ways to get people talking about your dog walking business… Do community marketing People have to know about you to talk about you. Without a huge marketing budget you’re more likely to get noticed with community-based marketing. …

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Using Positive Associations to Create Positive Dog Behavior

Association, or classical conditioning, is one of the two ways dogs learn, and a large part of how dogs experience the world. Dog walkers tend to be a source of positive associations. Think about how excited dogs get to hear their walker’s vehicle pull up or their key in the lock, or at the sight of a leash. And nothing trumps the walker him or herself! Dogs love leashes because leashes predict walks. They love the sound of your vehicle because it predicts your arrival. But you—you are the ultimate positive association. You make all the fun happen. Without you, the sound of the car is a …

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4 Keys to Positive Dog-Dog Relationships in Group Walks

Canine personalities vary just as human ones do. There are the natural networkers—the super gregarious dogs for whom to meet a dog is to make an instant new BFF. The most talented among these know just how to match their intensity, greeting style, and play style to any fellow canine they encounter. On the other end of the spectrum are our anti-networking wallflowers, the canine equivalent of those of us who prefer to spend the evening with a good book for company. And of course, dogs come in all personality shapes and sizes in between. Most dogs, like most people, have opinions about what kind …

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5 Low-Key Networking Strategies for the Networking-Averse

Networking. Ugh, we know. But please don’t stop reading. I want to share a fresh way of thinking about networking, and a whole different approach to it, too. If you’re thinking about the kind of networking that requires being loud, bold, and brash, the kind that requires confidently selling yourself, introducing yourself to strangers, and generally making an obnoxious nuisance of yourself, go ahead and put that down. Because ick. Also, I don’t know a lot of dog walkers who have that kind of personality. The thing is, networking can be truly useful to building and maintaining your dog …

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6 Tips For Reading Dog Body Language for Dog Walkers

Oh, if only dogs could talk, our jobs would be much easier! But though they don’t speak English, dogs do communicate all the time. A willingness to listen is one of a dog walker’s most important professional attributes. Being a pro means being a life-long student of canine body language, dedicated to attaining an ever deeper understanding of the subtle, nuanced, ritualized signals dogs use to “talk” to each other and to us. The payoffs of this enjoyable study are enormous and profound—an ever-increasing connection to our canine companions and charges, greater ease managing dog behavior and …

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5 Tips for Better Dog Walking Meet & Greets

Client meet & greets can be challenging. You need to learn everything there is to know about a dog you’re considering walking, both to make a good choice and to keep her (and everyone else) safe if you take her on. But it can be hard to get solid, reliable information during an intake interview. Potential clients are motivated to get you to say yes to their dog, likely to have gaps in their understanding of dog behavior, and may also feel anxious about being judged based on their dog’s poor recall or occasional reactive outbursts. Your ability to listen to a potential client—to hear …

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How To Write a Professional Dog Walking Bio

Getting the About page on your website right can make the difference between getting a phone call, text, or email from a potential client or having them move on without reaching out. Unfortunately, too many dog walking websites get the About page all wrong. The most common mistakes stem from a misunderstanding of the purpose of this page. On the surface this page is about you and your business, but in reality it’s all about your potential clients. Your About page should speak directly to your clients’ needs, worries, and problems—and why you’re the right dog walker or dog walking service to …

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What’s Wrong With the Right vs. Wrong Myth

Adapted from The Business of Dog Walking book by Veronica Boutelle Like any organism—humans included—dogs are motivated to do what works for them, and to avoid what doesn’t. (This is operant conditioning, or learning by cause and effect.) Also like humans, dogs are motivated to do things that feel safe, and to avoid things that don’t. (This is classical conditioning, or learning by association.) Unlike humans, dogs don’t—indeed can’t—understand right from wrong. Right versus wrong is a human construct that even human children don’t grasp before a certain developmental stage. Animals …

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