Yes I’m a solo enterprise. I’d say it took about a year to get to the point that I was turning work away, but I didn’t really advertise, it was all through word of mouth, I could have sped that up but I’d rather take the right clients and the right dogs. I advertise cat sitting but no one has ever booked me just for a cat, although I’ve done house sits with cats there as well as dogs. Being off lead completely depends on the dog, I will do at least one assessment walk in a secure field to test recall before taking them out in the wild. And then with any dog, for a good few times they’re off the lead with me at first I’ll call them back and reward with a treat, literally every couple of minutes, to build up a strong association that coming to back to me is a good thing to do. Some dogs I would never trust to be off the lead, and I never take the owner’s word for it, my idea of good recall and theirs can be wildly different. I have some great routes where I am very unlikely to ever meet another person or dog, which takes a lot of the stress away. I didn’t do any official training, but I worked for years as a groomer, as well as always having my own dogs, and know a fair bit about training through competing in dog sports. But even so, I look back at what I thought I knew when I started the business v what I know now, and I want to cringe. Start small and learn through experience, build up to group walks when you’re confident to. Be choosy about who you take on, and where they are, you want to have clients in a relatively small area otherwise the travel between jobs becomes a nightmare. Offer overnight sitting if you can because there’s a huge demand for that. Get insurance, DBS check and canine first aid.
However, unless you’re doing several large groups a day, it’s really hard to earn a decent income from it. I also run another business, selling online, and wouldn’t be able to live from what I make from dog walking alone. I’d definitely suggest having another part time job. Climate change is a factor as well, winters are long and wet, so so wet, and miserable, the mud is horrendous. And then you get times like the summer we’ve just had where you basically lose pretty much all your income because it’s too hot to walk.
Research what others in your area charge, don’t undercut them because you’re new, because it’s hard to put your prices up later. It’s really not the easy job people think it is, it can be lovely, but it’s also exhausting, being hyper aware all the time for dangers, the weather, the toll on your body, the mental load of planning your diary, messaging clients and doing your books…it’s a lot.