Three questions to ask your dog walker

I spend half my working life trying to justify why owners need to really vet their pet care service carefully. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of using the cheapest or the one with the impressive sign written van but what does that mean for your dog?

No one is fallible, accidents happen but it is how we as business owners deal with them and the moral ethos behind the reason we have set up our companies to care for your pets.

To help you decide how to choose here are three questions to ask your dog walker.

Where do your day care dogs go when you are out?

Silly question, right? I mean your pet care provider wouldn’t leave paying dogs home alone whilst they went off and earned cash with walking clients. Or would they? As animal lovers we don’t like saying no and letting our clients down. I know that myself from my time as a solo taking on last minute walking clients because I didn’t want them to be home alone.

As a daycare provider one more dog can turn into two or three and before you realise their entire house might be full. There was a prosecution in 2012 of an unlicensend dog boarder who sadly had to deal with an almost fatal dog attack.

Unfortunately with many local councils cutting budgets this isn’t as unusual as expected without inspectors to check on licensed and often unlicensed providers. Make sure your dogs well being is more important than money

What experience do you have?

Experience isn’t everything, we all have to start somewhere but what you do after you set up your business and how your education progress’ means a lot to your dedication to the job. I once had someone on an business advert question as to why we are first aid trained! After explaining to her she left a condescending reply and ran away to hide under her stone. After some investigation it turns our she was offering dog walking and I imagine felt a bit got at by a ‘big’ company.

Who walks the dogs?

Employee? Self employed? Franchise? What’s the difference?

There is actually a really big difference. For example if your dog walker is self employed under a company did you know legally they can ask ANYONE to walk your dog for you.

Of course I am not suggesting that is what yours is doing but if they fancy taking a day off they can ask their mate from the pub to walk your dog with absolutely no come back on the business they work for. Scary but factual! Why would a business do that you ask? It’s cheap, no holiday pay, a lot less tax and much less red tape.

You owe it to your dogs to get them the very best care you can afford and WE as company owners owe our clients the very best service we can offer. Sometimes that means turning work away and upsetting folk, it’s a whole new world is this pet sitting industry.

In 40 years we have gone from letting our beloved canines out to walk themselves to feeding them Organic food and hiring what amounts to pet nannies.