Finding the right professional dog walker for your dog or dogs is not an easy task. You want your dog to be treated well, to enjoy the exercise, to be safe. You want your dog walker to show up on time, to follow your instructions explicitly, to use common sense and intelligence, to report back to you clearly and honestly, and to know—through training and experience—what to do if something goes wrong.
Unless you do your own due-diligence, you may not get everything you want.
I asked dog professionals to talk about the horror stories—what could possibly go wrong?—and how to avoid bad choices when you hire a professional dog walker for your own dog.
I’ve been known to spy on my dog walkers (I haven’t done this for quite some time, though) just to make sure that they’re handling my dog appropriately, paying attention to the dog, not on their cell phones constantly, etc. I learned to do this the hard way from things that happened with my first dog, a reactive senior Rottie, when we lived in a condo.
1) She started to submissively urinate when the walker showed up. It turned out he was taking my senior dog for runs!
2) One walker came for only about half of the time we paid for.
3) Another walker took her on a pack walk with her arch-enemy from across the hall! My neighbors told me that they’d seen it and couldn’t believe the two dogs were getting along. I was stunned.
It took quite a few tries to finally find a service that we trust and that follows directions.
It’s a huge trust issue. Not only are we trusting dog walkers with our canine family members, but we’re also trusting them to have access to our homes. Mine even stay in my home when I’m away. There’s also the concern about what happens if your walker is sick or takes a vacation—do they have reliable back-up? One walker “forgot” to come over once. I had to race home to get my dog out after work.
I’ll be honest, when I moved to a new neighborhood over the summer, my first concern was who was going to walk my dogs!
—Christine Hale Vertucci
I did some dog walking when I first started my [training] business. One couple who went on vacation didn’t want anyone in the house, so it was a-couple-of-times-a-day visits for potty and feeding. When I got there the first day, they had accidentally locked one of their dogs in the garage. The dog had panicked (it was really hot) and tried to get out. The dog ended up in emergency with a pancreatic attack and dehydration, and spent the whole week there. Had I not had all the emergency information in place, I don’t know what I would have done, as the bill was over $8,000 and the couple was on a dude ranch and couldn’t be reached until later that night.
This is a really big deal that you hope never happens . . . but it does.
Another dog walker who is one of my grads at the Dog Walking Academy called me a few weeks ago about a dog that she was only to feed and allow out of the house with a bunch of gates, because the dog was 150 pounds and aggressive. She walked into the house and found the dog on a bed, bleeding all over. I suggested she call Animal Services so they could catch the dog and transport, which is what she did, and she had all the waivers in place. The owners were out of the county and very hard to reach. These things can and do happen!
The worst was a dog walker that I recommended, as she’d sat with my dogs and they really liked her. She is also a dog trainer, and my client needed someone that understood behavior with her GSD. My client was out of town and I was coming each day to work with the dog (100-pound German Shepherd). When I arrived, he was in a corner, panting and stressed, with his gums bright red. I called the pet sitter to see what happened and she said nothing, but they had been playing ball outside. I was there for two hours and he hadn’t recovered, so I texted the owners to put them on alert in case he needed to go to the vet.
I later received a call from the owner saying that the pet sitter had taken the dog for a walk around the block on a regular collar—although she had been told not to walk him except on his own block and on a harness. They ran into some dogs walking with their owners. The GSD was easily managed with me, but the pet sitter didn’t react fast enough. He slipped his collar and got into a fight with one of the other dogs, and it took some time to break it up. I phoned the sitter her when I found out, and she said she hadn’t told me because she wanted to talk to the owners first—but she waited a couple of hours before contacting them. Of course they never used her again. The reason she walked him away from their street was to smoke away from the owners’ home.
Another story is funny, but not. A woman who is an excellent walker took a dog out for his normal 20-minute walk. Just as they arrived back home, the dog rolled in a mud puddle. She had other appointments and had to figure out what to do. She couldn’t put a muddy dog in the house; if she gave him a bath, she would still need to get him dry. In the end, she asked her back-up person to take her other jobs, then ran the dog to a local dog wash and ended up paying for that . . . and losing money overall.
One of the things we talk about in the Dog Walking Academy is what to do if something happens. Most people don’t think about these things, which is why I always recommend professional walkers who have written policies in place and an agreement with the owners about what to do. After that lesson, this walker added a policy addressing similar situations to her contracts.
—Nan Arthur
Photo by Denise Gregg
Here in my city of Toronto, the barrier for entry into what is a growing profession is quite low. All the city requires to issue a permit is adequate liability insurance, which can be purchased quite easily with no credentials or education required.
I see it all. Dog walkers walking more than the allowed six per handler. Dog walkers taking fear-aggressive or otherwise stressed-out dogs into dog parks and letting them run off-lead. Dog walkers alpha-rolling and putting e-collars on dogs that have no recall and engage in over-aroused play or snark. A complete lack of engagement (dogs milling around while walkers chat), and dogs prone to predatory drift paired with teacup terriers.
Last week, a woman whom many of us have seen and reported to city officials for walking numerous dogs off-lead, with no handler engagement, in high-traffic urban areas, disregarded an owner’s strict instructions to keep their shy and fearful dog on lead at all times. The dog bolted and was lost. It was later reported dead—it had attempted to cross a highway and was struck and killed by a car. This is the most extreme example of what can go wrong, and ended tragically.
There is a huge lack of enforcement of safety regulations pertaining to leash-only areas. Dog walkers with little canine body-language or any science-based training knowledge (paired with huge egos) who are following outdated punishment-based methods to control their dogs take groups out that are barely manageable together. It can be complete chaos. Dogs get injured in dog-park fights or they get lost. I saw a dog walker last week showing off to dog owners that his own dog might jump perimeter fences in the local dog park, but “It’s okay, it’s part of his agility conditioning.”
It’s tragic. I can only hope for some sort of regulatory standards requiring a minimum amount of education and a baseline-knowledge exam to be implemented at some future point by my city.
—Beverley McKee
A company dog walker had a little guy unleashed in a NON-off-leash area near the lakeshore. The clients had expressly said “no off-leash” because he was a nervous dog. He ran. It appears he was hit and killed on the Gardiner; the household is awaiting confirmation. The owner of the company has been walking her own dogs off-leash for years, and the city has done nothing. The walker is traumatized, the dog is likely dead, and a family has lost their beloved pet.
From a Facebook page created to find the dog when it was lost:
In Memoriam Barley 01-28-13 to 10-27-17
Hi Everyone,
First, we’d like to thank you for your tireless support, involvement, and good wishes. It’s amazing to see the outpouring of genuine love & affection for Barley, whom most of you didn’t even know. It’s also very humbling, yet very heartening, to know that well-intentioned, good-hearted people do exist, never hesitating to become involved when they’re needed.
It saddens me to write this, but after six days of everyone’s efforts, we are faced with the harsh reality that it is unlikely that Barley has survived. The lack of recent sightings have left us with little hope for his return, and everything seems to point to the fact he may have perished during the first 24 hours.
While we have yet to confirm this through surveillance-camera footage or finding his remains, several eyewitnesses sighted him on the Gardiner immediately after his being let off his leash. Eyewitnesses have also confirmed they saw a small white dog being hit while trying to cross the Gardiner. Again, we greatly appreciate everyone’s efforts to convey and deliver all news, good and bad. It is only though these accounts that we remained hopeful at first, and now seek closure.
Barley was a beautiful, loving, and intelligent dog. He brought great joy & happiness to our family and all who met him. Yes, he was particular in his attention and affection, but he was a most loving dog and the definition of man’s best friend. I ask that today we celebrate Barley and celebrate the companionship and unconditional love that animals bring us. They add to our lives in every way, and in turn, their absence is felt deeply. I miss him. We’ll miss him. But his gaze and his kisses will always be in our hearts.
A little over a week ago, one of my training clients’ dogs was lost (and found safe, thank goodness) wearing a shock collar that the owner had never okayed.
I was a dog walker for 15 years. THESE INCIDENTS SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED. Good dog walkers are out there, but don’t just rely on Google reviews (they can be bought) or word-of-mouth. Know your walker. Ask exactly what they do in certain situations. Tell them what is okay or not okay for your dog clearly and in writing. Check up on them.
Your dogs are your family. My client dogs are also my family. Make sure your pet-care professionals are what they say they are. Do your due-diligence. Years ago, I would have been incensed to find a client had a camera in their home to see or GPS to track their pets. Now I think it should almost be a norm. Sad to see.
—Maggi Burtt
Are you curious about national dog-walking businesses and how they work? I highly recommend that you read one dog professional’s experiences with one dog-walking company before you sign up for any services:
Undercover At Your Local Dog Walking Company, by Erica Lieberman Campbell
https://pawsibilitiesny.com/undercover-local-dog-walking-company/
