Do You Need More Dog Walking Clients?

Filed Under Pet Business Marketing, Pet Sitting Business Tips | 6 Comments

Quick Tip Thursday Would you like to have more dog walking clients? Why not send out a flyer or ezine to your existing customers celebrating January as Walk Your Pets Month and let them know how regular walking and exercise can impact the wellbeing and happiness of their dog. Feel free to use the following article or modify it as you wish to make up your own tip sheet or informational flyer.

Why not also offer them a special deal on dog walking to entice them to give your servie a try? This month I sent out a coupon with my ezine that offers my clients a 1/3 price reduction on five 30 minute walking visits.

Here is the article:

Give Your Dog a Longer, Healthier Life!

In addition to the basic needs of food and shelter a dog also needs social interaction, positive attention from their owner, exercise, and mental stimulation. A simple 30 minute walk each day can fulfill these needs and keep your dog healthy and strong, and improve behavior at home through practicing obedience skills.

Social Skills
Dogs are social animals and enjoy the opportunity to socialize with other dogs. They are also pack animals and intinctually need to be with others - dogs or humans. A daily walking routine provides them with personal attention to satisfy this “pack need”.

Walking is a great way to ensure that puppies learn early to appropriately greet and interact with other dogs and people. These positive interactions build skills and ensure they will not act inappropriately when meeting other dogs as an adult.

Mental Stimulation

Dogs love to investigate their territory and seek out news smells and changes to their environment. Walking provides the mental stimulation that comes from experiencing a wide range of odors and scents. Without this stimulation a dogs enjoyment of life is limited and the dog can become bored and unhappy which leads to destructive behavior.

A daily walk is a great opportunity to reinforce training skills which builds self confidence, reduces stress, and makes sure they remember their training at home.

Exercise

Today it is estimated that 40% of American dogs are overweight. Regular exercise improves blood flow to the heart, and oxygen to the lungs, builds strong muscles, increases joint mobility, increases energy levels and helps to control weight.

Exercising your dog can enhance their quality of life, decrease risk of cancer, diabetes, arthritis, heart attach and strokes and extend their lifespan and the time that you can enjoy them being part of your family.

Exercise also improves a dogs mood, and decreases the risk of dog depression. It is especially important to keep aging pets agile and fit as they may not be inclined to exercise without your encouragement.

Preventing Behavior Problems

Walking relieves boredom that can cause behavior problem such as detructiveness, separation anxiety, and barking. Walking gives your dog a way to channel their energy in a positive way. Active dogs are typcially happy, well-adjusted dogs.

For good health and wellbeing of your dogs, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A regular routine of walking and playtime may be exactly what your dogs need to maintain its health for many years.

If you don’t have the time or energy to walk your dog regularly please consider accepting our offer to help. Take advantage of this months discount coupon and try out our regular dog walking services.

When you walk your dog don’t forget to take along a bag to pick up after them and help us prevent pollution of our ground water!

What is Your Favourite Breed to Pet Sit?

Filed Under Pet News | 5 Comments

Talk back pet sitting This week the AKC released it’s registration data from 2008 and announced the most popular dogs in the US. You can find the results here.

This got me to thinking about what my favorite breeds of cats and dogs are that I pet sit for. Here are my favorites:

Dog : Dachunds and Beagles - I like the hounds as they are so good natured and because I know that I can’t really have one of my own as they don’t get on well with cats. I’m sure if I found the right one or trained them right I wouldn’t have a problem.

Cat: This one is harder as I have plenty of lovable moggies that I can’t classify into any breed. I do love the British shorthairs though - their round faces and big eyes. I’d love to get one of these one day. Maybe when my little Burmese female calms down in her old age! She hates any other cats - we looked after a friends cat in our house for 2 days a couple of years ago and she took her rage out on our other older male Burmese and wouldn’t sit with him for months - they usually snuggle all the time!

What are you favorite breeds to pet sit? Tell us in a comment and tell us why!

10 Qualities of a Professional Pet Sitting Service

Filed Under Pet Sitting Business Tips | 3 Comments

I was cleaning up my office yesterday and ran across a flyer that I wrote and printed to hand out at a pet event a couple of years ago. Here are 10 of the qualities customers look for when choosing a pet sitter:

1. Sitters display love for animals and concern for their health and safety

2. Service is bonded and insured

3. Visit clients home before the first assignment to meet pets and get detailed information about their care.

4. Able to provide personal references and testimonials

5. Completes a written service contract

6. Calls to confirm that the client has returned home safely

7. Carefully screens pet sitters for employment

8. Provides a feedback form for clients

9. Takes precautions to make sure a clients absence from home is not detected

10. Keeps regular office hours and answers clients inquiries and complaints promptly

Does your pet sitting business meet all of these criteria? If not - why not work on fixing that this month.

Do you have any other qualities that you think clients are looking for in their pet sitting service? Leave a comment and let us know!

A 3 Step Method For Creating Your Pet Sitting Systems

Filed Under Pet Sitting Business Tips | 2 Comments

Systems Saturday If you have been pet sitting for a while then you have probably slipped into routines of how you perform different tasks. How you answer the phone, conduct a client interview, perform a visit, and follow-up with clients. Do you have these routines written down or are they all in your head? If you are like me they are in your head!

Getting routines written down on paper can help you to see opportunities to improve the way you do things and make regularly performed tasks more efficient. When you start growing and need to get help from assistants or sitters having a written set of steps will save you time when you assign them tasks and make sure they they perform the tasks the way that you want them done.

Creating systems is just getting your routines down on paper in an organized format - the best way to do this is to create flowcharts that show the steps involved in each task and how they link together.

A simple method for creating systems is to ask yourself three questions:

1) What are we doing? What are the tasks that have to be done for your business to generate, serve, and follow up with customers?

2) Where are we going? What is the desired outcome upon completion of each of these tasks?

3) How do we get there? What are the steps that have to happen to reach the desired outcome?

Lets look at an example -

Step 1 - Answering a call from a potential new client

Step 2 - The desired outcome is that they will book pet sitting visits and schedule an initial interview. Another outcome will be to get their contact details - phone number and email address - so that you can keep in touch with them and follow up. This means that even if they call and cancel (the neighbor has decided they can watch the pets this time!) that you will have their details and can send them coupons or flyers to entice them to use your service in the future. A third outcome may be to find out where they heard about you so that you can track the effectiveness of your marketing.

Step 3 - The steps that you have to go through to get them to book will vary depending on the client but you will always have to :

Greet the client.

Ask them about their needs and their pets and when they will need your services

Explain the features and benefits of your service and your pricing

Ask them when they would like to schedule their initial interview or consultation

Ask them for their address, phone number and an email address (so that you can send them welcome information)

Ask them how they found your service.

This is a simplified step by step process for the initial call - in reality on a system flowchart the next step on the call would depend on their response you have received from the previous question. However, I hope this example has illustrated how the 3 steps can be used.

These 3 steps were designed by process expert Beth Schneider of Process Prodigy. I love Beth’s straightforward way of explaining the process creation process.

I am currently working on my first set of business systems. Do you have documented systems for your pet sitting business? How have they helped you? Tell us by leaving a comment!

Free Pet Disaster Preparedness Guide

Filed Under Pet Emergency Planning | 3 Comments

Every pet owner and pet business owner should have their own disaster preparedness guide. You never know when a natural (or manmade) disaster can strike and you need to have a plan to ensure that you know how to get your pets to a safe place.

If you own a pet sitting business - you will also need a plan to keep your clients pets safe in an emergency situation. You should have a documented plan on hand and your pet sitters should be familiar with it so that you can act quickly when you need to.

Having a plan that you can show your clients and advertise on your website will differentiate you from other pet sitting services and give them confidence in you.

You can pick up a free Pet Disaster Preparedness Guide from Diana Guerrero’s blog - ArkAnimals.com. All you need to do is sign up for her monthly newsletter using the sign up box at the top right of this page.

Here is a preview of the Animal Disaster Preparedness Guide Table of Contents:

About this Project

Expect the Unexpected

Examples: flooding, earthquake, fire

Animal Disaster Preparedness?

Are you Prepared?

The Beginning: Questions to Ask

The Next Step: More Questions & Action!

Does Your City/Town Have A Disaster Plan Program?

You Need an Evacuation Plan

Animal Needs

Animal Rescue (Disaster) Kits

Do it Yourself Animal Disaster Kit (Dogs & Cats)

Avian Collections & Birds

Injured Bird Tips

Equine & Large Animals

Horse Kit Items

Importance of Horse Training

Livestock & Fire

Earthquake Warning Behavior from Animals

Cats, Dogs, Horses & Livestock, Birds

Other Animals

Post Disaster Animal Behavior

Cats, Dogs, Horses & Livestock

Post Disaster Problems

Hazards

Always Take Your Animals With You!

Desensitization & Other Training

Other Resources

Appendix of Animal Behavior & Needs

Moving Livestock

Other Animals

Dog Emergency Care Sheet

Cat Emergency Care Sheet

Bird Emergency Care Sheet

Horse Emergency Care Sheet

Emergency Care Sheet for Sheep, Goats, Llamas

Cattle Emergency Care Sheet

Swine Emergency Care Sheet

Appendix of Historical Animal Behavior

Animal Behavior Precursors & Locations

Resources & Recommended Reading

Appendix of Animal Disaster Agencies, Training & Equipment

Disaster/Search & Rescue Dogs

Do you have a disaster plan for your pet sitting business? Have you ever had to use it? I’d love to hear about your plan or story of how you put it in action. Please leave a comment on this post!

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