“Don’t pet sitters walk dogs too?”
Many pet sitters will offer dog walking as part of their pet sitting services. However, unlike dog walking, a pet sitter’s focus is not solely on dog-care, but on the care of many different types of animals. This takes the focus away from unique and interesting dog-related activities and adventures that could be planned by someone whose focus is solely on running a dog walking business. Thus taking emphasis away from your single largest demographic, that being dog owners.
Having a pet sitting business requires a much greater time investment and overall responsibility than dog walking and unfortunately for the same or even less money! If you’re like most business owners you want to maximize your income while lowering your overhead. Whether that overhead is time, money, or both. Dog walking fits the bill!
“But I like the idea of working with many different animals, I think it would be fun.”
This is a lifestyle choice. Working with animals is fun and rewarding. I was very into the idea of pet sitting when I started out. I thought the variety of animals, clients, and schedule would be great but it turned out to be very difficult, and I soon found that I was working 7 days a week and couldn’t take a vacation of my own! Pet sitting offers a huge variety of work which is both it’s blessing and it’s curse.
“What would be better: a pet sitting business or dog walking if I eventually want to become a dog trainer?”
Most of the players in the dog training world these days started out in a related dog-care field, many of them having been dog walkers!
“I became a dog walker,” [Cesar Millan] says. “I’d take out 30 dogs, all walking behind me, and people would stop and stare as I’d go through Beverly Hills with rottweilers and pit bulls. I’d take them for four-hour walks and charge $10, and their owners were amazed when I’d bring back calm, contented dogs.” –Telegraph, UK (Mar 2008)
If you eventually want to become a professional dog trainer what better way to learn about dog behavior and gain professional dog handling experience than walking dogs? Dog walking beats pet sitting in this area hands down! The experience you’ll gain handling dogs in public will give you the hands-on knowledge, observation skills, and confidence you’ll need to become a great trainer!
![[Google]]( http://www.dogzanny.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/easy-adsenser/google-light.gif)
This is a question I’m grappling with right now, J.D. I own a copy of your book “The Dog Walker’s Startup Guide” and you discussed this topic in there, too. However, like you said in the book, when you first start up it’s necessary to offer pet sitting in addition to dog walking. I want to focus on dog walking because my main goal is to become a professional dog trainer one day. That is much further down the road from now. It does seem like people are more interested in pet sitting. When I tell them I’m advertising myself as a dog walker, they wonder how many people are going to want that. I only just launched my dog walking website last month. I’m still working on getting my pet sitting insurance from PSI. I wasn’t aware that there is an additional fee on top of the $150 you pay for membership. I thought insurance was covered in that. It will be interesting to see if I can gain clients just through organic google search results alone. Highly doubtful, but I’m working at it. Seems like very few people search for dog walkers in Rhode Island.
Dear Rhode Island,
I totally understand your point of view and I would stick with your business plan of being a “dog walker” not a “pet” sitter. However, as I stated in my book, I think it’s important to remain flexible when starting out. If someone is looking for a pet sitter to take care of their cats at their home ( a couple of visits ) why not do the job? When you’re starting out you won’t have a whole lot of clients and you’ll probably have a lot of time on your hands. Take what comes, but continue to advertise yourself as a dog walker. The work will come and as it does you can begin saying no to the gigs you aren’t interested in. This is a tough economy right now, if you have time and feel comfortable with the request then take the job, get paid, and keep on with it. That’s what I did, and it paid off. I got more referrals and more often than not I was hired to pet sit dogs. Training is an excellent evolution by the way. The insurance costs are pretty normal and PSI is a great organization so a good choice there. As far as organic search results… There is a whole science to that. If you are hoping to save some dough by getting your clients through organic searches I think you might be waiting a long time. Try some of the advertising methods I mention in my book to get started. Then get a good book on SEO and start tweeking your site. Thanks for checking in! Good luck and let me know how you’re doing.
Thanks for the advice and the well wishes, J.D. I didn’t mean to imply I was going to sit around and wait for google to bring miracles. I’m being proactive in finding other marketing ideas. I’m working on the Yellow Pages right now. Also, I joined Twitter and Facebook. If memory serves, there was no mention of these two social media sites in your book. Are these worthwhile? Twitter boomed after you wrote the book, but Facebook was already popular before the book.
Facebook and Twitter are certainly good options for networking, increasing your name recognition, keeping in touch with customers, and generating referrals. Creating a Facebook account and Twitter account for your business is definitely a good idea. At the time I was running my business these mediums weren’t really available or being utilized for this purpose.
Buy:Retin-A.Lumigan.Actos.Nexium.Zyban.100% Pure Okinawan Coral Calcium.Petcam (Metacam) Oral Suspension.Mega Hoodia.Valtrex.Accutane.Prevacid.Human Growth Hormone.Arimidex.Synthroid.Prednisolone.Zovirax….