Dog walking services

[StuTheGrouch]

dhutch said:

StuTheGrouch said:

...previous walker even wanted a bloody retainer for things like school holidays...

I've yet to come across it in either field, but talking to friend who have a young child they have the same will child care. Stop paying and they kick you of their list. So not only would you be paying a 'second mortgage' in fees, if you go away for a week, or have your parents look after them one day a week, you are still paying the same rate straight through. Mad!

We have children in childcare too, and our previous nursery would extrapolate the days our child would usually attend across the year, and then divide that figure into a monthly bill. Therefore, we would be paying the same throughout the year, even if we weren't using the nursery. My wife is a teacher, so we weren't, yet they still expected us to pay £600 a month throughout the summer holidays.

Like I said, that was the previous nursery and was the sole reason we switched.

[StuTheGrouch]

iphonedyou said:

Emanresu said:

If you need to hire someone to walk your dog, you shouldn’t have a dog.

I sometimes think it would be quite nice to be so intellectually limited that you see life in this simple, almost childlike way.

[ooid]

StuTheGrouch said:

I simply expect that whilst my dog is in their care that they have full responsibility (aside from the illness issue I mentioned). It's unlikely anything will happen, but in the event it does that's surely what their insurance is there for.

.

I had to use three different dog walkers/boarding people in the last 2 years. The first one was quite professional/trainer. We were travelling to sydney so had to leave our dog more than a week with her. She had the contract and everything, but our dog had a little accident and scar. No stitches, its all gone but it was not nice. The others one we tried, quite local, one of them was quite cold so we did not continue. The second was quite nice lady, and they took our dog in an emergency, last minute, when we had a health situation.

Well, currently the last one we use (for boarding), our local, quite friendly chap who has himself loads of dogs. He is great, super-pro. We do not use him as dog-walker, as my wife works from home but we leave our dog with him during holidays or specific night-outs (I really do not like leaving dogs alone more than 5-6 hours, it's a bit cruel). He has no contract or anything, but I think due to his experience and his dogs, we like him.

During this christmas break, I will also look after a friend's dog, for a week or so. It's not commercial, but they might pay us a kindly fee. I'm doing this completely to explore having a second dog for ours, as she is hyper-active (Beagle!)