Ms. Gretch says some of her clients pay up to $1,200 a week to have their dogs walked four times a day.
#NYC Dog walkers just ain't what they used to be..I know, I used to be one as a kid...
The city's most high-end walking service may be It's a Dog's Life NY. The outfit's hourlong strolls start at $41, and the dog gets more attention than a naughty Dalton fourth-grader. Founder Elena Gretch, a former derivatives trader, says most of her clients are Wall Street bankers who demand that the walk be "productive." That often means obedience training or weight-loss exercises followed by a post-stroll paw cleaning, organic cookies and a tooth brushing. It's all administered, of course, by an attractive, highly trained college grad certified in doggy CPR.
Ms. Gretch says some of her clients pay up to $1,200 a week to have their dogs walked four times a day.
WSJ.com: A Step Up in Pooch Pampering
Bryan Thomas for The Wall Street Journal NYC Doggies' Jennifer Wheeler picks up Sherpa.
When Koda took her usual afternoon constitutional this past Wednesday, she was under heavy surveillance. As soon as the sweet, bear-headed Newfoundland hit the pavement, her walker, an employee with the dog-walking service Swifto, launched a GPS iPhone app to track the 120-pound canine's swaggering stroll along West 24th Street. When Koda sniffed a grumpy bulldog in Madison Square, the walker recorded the exact coordinates of the encounter. And when she paused just short of Fifth Avenue to defecate at the curb, the walker tapped the app's brown "pooped" icon, plotting the excretion on a digital map of Manhattan.
All this was for the benefit of Koda's owner, Lisa Paulson, a branding coordinator who puts in long hours at a big cosmetics firm. While she's busy at work, Ms. Paulson gets text messages and photos documenting Koda's ambulatory exploits. And if she wants extra reassurance, she can log into Koda's online account to view a digital map detailing the day's walking route—complete with markers indicating poop sites and canine encounters. Ms. Paulson says the service provides peace of mind. And what does the gentle Koda think of all this surveillance? Ms. Paulson smiles: "I don't think she knows."
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Bryan Thomas for The Wall Street Journal Sherpa going for a swim at Ramapo Mountain State Forest in New Jersey.
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Bryan Thomas for The Wall Street Journal Sherpa swimming at Ramapo Mountain State Forest.
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Byron Smith for The Wall Street Journal Elena Gretch, the founder of It's a Dog's Life NY.
Swifto
The Swifto GPS app.
The Swifto GPS app.
New York dog walking used to be a cash-only business dominated by out-of-work actors who terrorized Central Park with canine packs the size of buffalo herds. But now that pets are the new children, the dog-owning Gothamite—obsessed with his widdle Wookums but too busy to walk her—wants more, and the industry has responded like an overeager beagle. These days, the typical dog-walking service is a big outfit offering customized strolls with a bonded, insured NYU grad for $30 an hour—$40 on weekends and holidays, please.
Contemporary dog owners are like old-school immigrants—working long hours to ensure their children enjoy the pampered life of leisure they'll never experience. While their owners toil in the office, New York's canines enjoy long jogs along the Hudson with professional dog runners and two-hour private tours up Broadway.
The luckiest dogs, such as Sherpa, a German shepherd living on Central Park West, enjoy frequent wilderness hikes with outfits like NYC Doggies, a service that offers half-day out-of-town excursions for $65 to $85 per dog. Jennifer Wheeler, a former lawyer ("I took a massive pay cut") who drives the dogs upstate or out to New Jersey in her silver Hyundai, says a typical jaunt with a pack of three or four hounds includes a three-mile mountain hike and a dip in the lake.
The city's most high-end walking service may be It's a Dog's Life NY. The outfit's hourlong strolls start at $41, and the dog gets more attention than a naughty Dalton fourth-grader. Founder Elena Gretch, a former derivatives trader, says most of her clients are Wall Street bankers who demand that the walk be "productive." That often means obedience training or weight-loss exercises followed by a post-stroll paw cleaning, organic cookies and a tooth brushing. It's all administered, of course, by an attractive, highly trained college grad certified in doggy CPR.
Ms. Gretch says some of her clients pay up to $1,200 a week to have their dogs walked four times a day. No wonder eager entrepreneurs are piling onto the dog wagon. The National Association of Professional Pet Sitters says the number of walkers nationwide has doubled since the recession, and New York is no exception.
The industry's low start-up costs tempt many new college grads along with the unemployed, says Manhattan-based industry consultant Josh Schermer. But it's no walk in the park. While a solo operator in Manhattan walking multiple dogs at a time can easily clear $50,000 a year, getting there requires a grueling, 15-stop, rain-or-shine daily schedule supplemented by lots of pet sitting.
Mr. Schermer says that when he founded his Downtown Pets walking service 10 years ago, he spent long afternoons handing out fliers in front of the Union Square Petco and put in 100 hours a week walking dogs all over Lower Manhattan. "I would cry sometimes at night, it was so tough," he says.
Once you outgrow the solo stage, it doesn't get easier. Paul Columbia, who founded NYC Dog Walkers, perhaps the city's largest walking service, says he out-earns what he made as a senior executive at Exxon Mobil. But he's still a one-man show, supervising 25 full-time walkers and handling all the operations for 80,000 walks a year. Mr. Columbia says he competes on price; hiring a staff would mean upping his rates by $1 or more per walk. Instead, he works six days a week starting at 7:30 a.m. Scheduling alone takes most of his Sundays.
And profits are slim. The typical dog-walking business spends more than half its revenue on walkers who earn $12 to $16 an hour. Another 15% goes toward insurance, bonding and credit-card fees. And then there's the cost of poop bags. These days, they have to be biodegradable—think 10 cents a pop.
If only there was a way to run the whole operation with robots. The folks at Swifto come close. The Manhattan-based business, which launched in February and is waging a massive dog park-based marketing campaign, is more of a tech start-up that happens to walk dogs than the other way around. The staff includes a programming developer, operations wonk and, of course, a social media manager. It's already screened and contracted with 80 independent dog walkers who accept assignments via smartphone app. Scheduling is automated. A late arrival triggers a text message to the walker: "You're in trouble."
The cost for this service is $16 to $20 for a half-hour stroll. But for $250,000, CEO Penina First says she's offering a lifetime of unlimited walks. Yes, that's more than tuition at Columbia, but isn't Wookums worth it?—Contact Ms. Kadet at anne.kadet@dowjones.com
A version of this article appeared October 6, 2012, on page A16 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Step Up in Pooch Pampering.
Read the article online here: A Step Up in Pooch Pampering - WSJ.com
