Have you ever thought of walking other people’s dogs as means of earning a bit of part time cash?

For those that like the great outdoors it can be an excellent way of getting some excersise and earning some money at the same time. There are a growing number of City based dog lovers who rely on professional dog walkers, and lets face it, where would you rather be on a glorious summer day, cooped up in an office with faulty air conditioning or getting paid to walk around the park with man’s best friend.

Dogs are fully dependant on humans, they need companionship and thrive with regular excercise. Ensuring a dog is well excercised can improve a dog’s health & prevent or relieve behavior problems caused by boredom and excess energy.

Can you really call Dog Walking a Part Time Job?

You might not think that Dog Walking looks like a proper part time job, but if you dig a bit deeper it does have quite a lot going for it.

•  There aren’t really any qualification or age limitations for a professional dog walker. As long as you are sufficiently mobile to walk for a few miles and are OK with dogs you are off to a good start. 
• You will be in control of the days and times that you want to work.
• You can take on as many or as few clients as you want, within reason.
• A wise entrepreneur once told me that the best businesses to get into were ones where you had repeat customers and this is certainly true for dog walking. The majority of dog owners won’t just be looking for you to walk their dog once, they will be looking for somebody on an ongoing basis, potentially for years.
• Another thing my entrepreneur friend shared with me is that when you are selling a mere commodity a consumer won’t value it very highly or have a particularly strong desire to purchase it. But, if you can appeal to their needs and desires on a more emotional level (e.g. Love, Money, Lust, Nurture, Family, Health) then they will value your product much more highly and often pay irrational sums of money for it. What makes a  Rolex watch better than a Timex, what makes a Marks & Spencers sandwich better than one from Greggs. The answer is not much but your purchase isn’t based on the intrinsic value of the commodity, the clever marketers have been messing with you and built an often enormous desire that resulted in you paying much more for their product.

  I don’t feel I’ve explained that very well but the point is… Dog owners love their dogs and treat them as a part of the family. They will spend irrational sums of money on them, you just need to look at the price of those crazy gourmet pet foods in the supermarket. Now I’m not suggesting you can charge crazy ammounts for your dog walking services but you should be able to manage a pretty respectable hourly rate. And if you feel you can walk a few dogs at the same time then you could earn a very nice hourly rate as a part time dog walker.

Getting started as a Professional Dog Walker

You will definately want to use the Internet to search for any dog owners who are actively looking for a professional dog walker. You will find adverts on some of the job and classifieds websites from individuals and agencies. You can also use the classifieds sites to post your own adverts promoting yourself as a professional dog walker. You might also want to post some adverts in local shop windows (newsagents, pet shops etc..). Before you do this though, have a think about the area you want to cover, you might want to advertise your services in areas where the residents are more affluent and more likely to be holding down well paid jobs with potentially long hours e.g. Kensington, Chelsea etc.. Here are a few links to websites where you can start your search. 

• UK Dog Walking Jobs
• Job Offers for a Dog Walker in London
• Dog Walker Jobs in London

Other things to consider.

• When you meet a prospective client for the first time you should remember that their dog is one of the family to them so your interview process could be as rigourous as if they were hiring a nanny to look after a child. Make sure you are well presented, have references available and be prepared to answer questions about dogs.
• In order to build trust with both the client and the dog you might offer to accompany them on one of their walks.
• If you get serious about dog walking you will want to look into Professional Insurance in case anything should happen to a dog whilst it is in your care.
• If you find you enjoy dog walking and are able to make a respectable hourly wage there is no reason why you can’t gradually build it into a full time job by working more hours, taking on more clients, more dogs and  potentially some helpers. 
• There is also good scope to expand into offering other services to you clients. You could consider
  
  • Dog Sitting
  • Dog Grooming
  • and even Dog Training

I hope you found this article helpful, please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.