Starting a dog walking business?

Question

i am 23 years old and i have been thinking of starting my own small business. one of my ideas is walking dogs. alot of women around here have opened small dog walking business. i like in a decently sized city so there are lots of potential clients and alot of people who live in this city and upper middle class so they make a good income. what do i need to know about starting up a small dog walking business? if not dog walking, any other small business a woman could start up? thanks for any answers

Answer 1

For a dog walking business you will need insurance both to cover the fact you have keys to other peoples homes and go into them when the owner is gone and insurance if something happens to the dog when you are walking it.

You should take a pet first aid and  safety class, offer by the Red Cross. You should join NAPS or one of the pet sitters associations.

They can help you out with everything you need to be a dog walker.

Answer 2

I don't know much about dog walking as a business, but i did meet a dog walker out one day and he had about 10 dogs in the park - my dog loved it :o)

We got chatting and he had his business for about 20 years.  He said it's not so good now because of council restrictions (i live in Melbourne, Australia) and he sometimes gets complaints and things going wrong with people who don't like dogs - i guess people in the park and surrounding residents.  I can't remember details of what happened or if he was doing anything wrong, but it's worth thinking about.  I know that with just 2 dogs i own, that i run into problems sometimes with other people in off leash areas - mainly other dog owners.  I imagine situations would be made worse if you have lots of dogs at once, and if they're not your dogs so difficult to predict behaviours sometimes.

Also that guy had all the dogs in a station wagon - worth thinking about transporting the dogs if you need to.  I guess to make enough money you would need to do that and walk more than 1 dog at a time?

Just a couple of things i noticed with that guy i met.