Dog Walking

dog walker with 4 dogs on a leash

Dog Walking

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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How To Fire a Dog

Sometimes, despite all our love for dogs, things don’t work out. It may be a bad personality match. (Most of us have met a dog or two who just gets under our skin, though we feel badly admitting it.) More often it’s a behavior issue that becomes too challenging or risky to manage—stranger aggression or active resource guarding or a tendency to want to chase after joggers, for example. It’s never easy to decide to fire a dog, even when you feel you have no other choice. And most of the time, the decision making process is difficult and fraught with emotion. But making the decision is just …

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How To Know When To Fire a Dog

We become professional dog walkers because we love dogs so much we want to spend not just our personal lives, but also our working lives in their company. So it can be hard to know when to call it quits with a dog, to make the painful decision to fire a four-legged client. More often than not dog walkers wait too long to make these calls, sometimes putting themselves, their businesses, other dogs, and the public at risk in an attempt to “make it work,” or to avoid upsetting a human client, or out of a sense of duty to the dog. Guilt, love, and conflict avoidance can be a powerful trio …

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Playing It Safe Off Leash

Dog walking comes in many shapes and sizes. In most areas dog walkers take one dog or a small group of compatible canines on leashed outings, either in their own neighborhoods or after driving to a trailhead or park. But there are some places where off-leash dog walks are both legal and the norm, and this trend is slowly finding its way to more dog-friendly locales. Off-leash walking has many advantages, not the least of which is much more fun and exercise for the dogs. But, of course, these advantages come hand-in-hand with greater risk for all involved—for dogs, dog walkers, clients, and …

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Don’t Play It Safe with Your Dog Walking Business

Remember how your mom always gave you the lemming talk when you wanted to do something because all the other kids were doing it? You remember it. She’d say, “So what then? If all the other kids were jumping off a cliff, does that mean you should, too?” Personally I never really got the connection between jumping off a cliff and going to a concert or a sleep-over birthday party, but I suppose in the abstract mom had a point: It’s not always wise to do things just because it’s what everyone else is doing. This is certainly true in our industry. In fact, many of the common dog walking business …

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How To Add Your First Dog Walking Employee

Your dog business is doing well. You have more work than you can handle and it’s time to think about the next step. Congratulations! You’ve probably got some questions: Do I hire an employee or an Independent Contractor? What’s the cost of bringing someone on? What’s involved in setting up a payroll? Where do I start? On the surface, hiring an independent contractor seems easier and less costly, but it isn’t necessarily the right way to go. The IRS has strong opinions about how you classify your new worker because of the impact on taxes paid, so you need to make sure your decision will …

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How To Add a New Dog To Your Walking Group

Woo hoo and congrats! You’ve got a new dog walking client! If you’re walking singles, adding a new dog is usually a relatively simple procedure. If the new dog is particularly shy, you may wish to take extra steps, such as arranging a joint walk or two with your client, to help you ease into Fido’s inner circle. Following that with asking your client to be home once or twice when you arrive, but not walk with you, should do the trick in most cases. But if you’re a group walker, introducing a new dog can make for a stressful day for all involved—you, the dogs you already walk, and …

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Time-Outs for Dogs: Down Time for Poor Behavior

We know that reinforcing dog behavior we like is key to seeing more of it. Unfortunately, simply ignoring behavior we don’t care for isn’t always enough to make it go away, particularly when the target behavior is self-reinforcing. A dog doesn’t need a cookie from us to keep humping other dogs if humping works to gain the attention of other dogs. Same with barking at other dogs to elicit play. And dogs with “tarzan” or bullying tendencies will happily go on interacting with fellow canines inappropriately regardless of whether we look the other way. So what to do when a dog you walk engages …

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Time-Outs for Dog Walkers: Vacations for Longevity

Have you taken a vacation recently? Do you have one planned? If you answered yes to either question, woo-hoo! (If you answered yes to both, double high five!) If you said no, this article is for you. I’m concerned about the number of dog walkers I work with, teach, and talk to who don’t take regular vacations. Some don’t even take regular weekend days because they’re also pet sitting or boarding dogs in their homes. This worries me because I know that dog pros who don’t take down time don’t stay dog pros for as long as those who do. And I want you to enjoy what you do for a long time to …

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5 Tips for a Successful Dog Walking Business

Running a small business is hard work, even when you get to spend many of your business hours outdoors with cheerful canine companions. Given that it’s that part of the job—the dog part—that you’re probably in this for, you want to make sure you have plenty of dogs to walk. And we want to make sure you’ve got plenty of income to sustain you, too, so you can keep walking those dogs for many years to come. Understandably, most dog walkers give short shrift to the business part of owning a dog walking business. But if you mean to do this for your long-term living, your business requires the same …

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5 Dog Training Tips for Professional Dog Walkers

As dog walkers we don’t train to change dogs’ behavior for their owners. That’s a trainer’s job. We train for canine safety and to make the job easier and more enjoyable for ourselves. Training means an easier time getting past distractions like squirrels, children, garbage on the ground, and other dogs. It means an easier time getting and keeping a dog’s focus. It means an easier time keeping off-leash dogs nearby, and the peace of mind of knowing they’ll come when you call. In short, walking dogs is fun, but walking calm, responsive dogs is a blast. It’s also good marketing; nothing looks …

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What To Do When You Can’t Pay Your Taxes

By guest author Marie Poliseno, CPA, of Dollars & Scents Accounting Services. Don’t have the money to pay your taxes this year, for whatever reason? Maybe you’ve just started your new dog walking business and are struggling with cash flow issues. Or your trusty dog walking vehicle gave up the ghost, forcing you to clear out your savings to replace it. Or it could be that you were genuinely blindsided by the number you owe. Whatever the reason you’ve fallen short this year, you’re not alone. Millions of taxpayers find themselves in exactly the same position, and it doesn’t have to mean …

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