Comments on: If this were your dogwalker, wouldn’t you want to know?

By: cocomama

cocomama — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:20:26 +0000

Understood and appreciated, Christie. Thank you for taking the time to respond my thought, and for not kicking this dog lover.

By: Amy

Amy — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:51:11 +0000

Don’t you have ordinances against pack walking?
And Fred, either you or your walker must be a millionaire. How does she make a living off of a single walk in the afternoon? That just seems like an unrealistic expectation.

I’m fine with walkers going to the park. I don’t pay them to get the walker to walk. My pup needs all the exercise she can get and she’s a must run, not walk kinda girl, so for her its great. I understand that for some others, not so much. It’s nice when a walker can tailor to a pet’s individual needs, but I’m flexible as well. I can’t fork over enough dollars to ask a walker to strap on an odometer, eat her wheaties, and give me the mileage.

However, I do expect that a walker is not sipping lattes a good distance from the park.

By: kb

kb — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:53:38 +0000

Christie,
Don’t worry about it too much. We’ve all been in circumstances where when we look back we wonder what the other options were. Making us aware of the issue was worth the story.

By: Christie Keith

Christie Keith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:44:16 +0000

cocomama, I hate it when people add self-exculpatory details after they’ve told their story, but here I go: there was no one else around, and I was much too far away from the dogwalker for him to have heard me if I’d shouted. I came back after I took my dog home, and his SUV and all the dogs were gone. In hindsight, there were other things I could have done, including marching back into the park and telling him one of his little dogs was under the vehicle, but at the time, it seemed logical to get Rebel home and come back.

By: cocomama

cocomama — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:56:57 +0000

A mere shout to the dog walker or another within the sound of your voice, to be sure someone noticed the little one.

By: kb

kb — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:32:16 +0000

I have showed up at the doggy day care unexpectedly just to make sure the dogs are always supervised.

By: Fred

Fred — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:42:53 +0000

The pro dog walkers and the dog owners get into arguments quite often at one of the dog parks I frequent. It’s usually about not picking up but it’s also because it’s a bit of a cop out for the dog walkers to use that park and I guess the dog owners feel somewhat antagonistic about that. If someone’s getting paid to walk a dog for an hour then they should be walking for an hour, not just depositing the dogs in a fenced in area for 10 - 15 minutes while talking on a cell phone and munching on an egg mcmuff. Sure some of the dogs run around and have a great 15 minutes but there are the other ones, say the ones that prefer human interactions, who don’t quite know what to do with themselves and just lie down beside the yakking dog walker.

My own dog walker, and I’m not going to say who she is because I’m selfish and don’t want anyone stealing her, takes my dogs out for a full afternoon, sometimes morning as well, through wooded trails which is not an easy thing to do considering we live in the city.

By: Christie Keith

Christie Keith — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:15:35 +0000

2CatMom, yes, but I had to also contend with Rebel, and leading him into a large pack of strange, off leash dogs, some of them toys, two of them retrievers, and a whole lot of little terriers, with their leashes winding around his legs, to talk with a man I didn’t know and basically tell him he was doing something I didn’t approve of, didn’t strike me as a great idea at the time. Plus, you know, the brain freeze. I did take Rebel home and come back right away with my camera, but he was gone.

20-20 hindsight.

By: 2CatMom

2CatMom — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:10:15 +0000

Christie: I think you should have said something to him about the dog back by the car. For the dog’s sake, not his. Its sounds like he didn’t have a clue that someone was missing from his pack. And if it were your dog, wouldn’t you want someone to say “excuse me, but I think you left something by the car.”

By: Colorado Transplant

Colorado Transplant — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:56:07 +0000

Aat 10:00 mountain time, Dr. Narda Robinson will host a live chat about animal acupuncture with the Washington Post.

The website is http./csuvets.colostate.edu/news/index.htm

She is my daughter and is a veterinarian.