How much would you guess I earn?

[Dogladyloveswine]

I took redundancy from a very corporate job a few years ago. Very respectable job title with a big company.

I decided to have a go at home dog boarding. So I look after dogs in my home for people who don’t like kennels. I also do a bit of doggie day care. It’s all just in my house.

It obviously doesn’t carry the same respect that my corporate job did! You don’t need any qualifications.

If you had to guess, what would you think I earn a month?

Hi grumps! Always one.🙄

Yes, you'd need a 6 foot fence for sure, especially if you took larger dogs. Many big dogs could jump a 3ft fence. I also have 2 bolts on our gate - top and bottom - so that no one can let themselves into my garden. I can't risk a delivery man opening the gate if the dogs are outside, as some would bolt.

Thank you for this, that's very kind! I perhaps gave the wrong impression when I said menial. I think I just meant "unskilled" compared to my previous corporate role, which required qualifications and experience.

In reality, I do know that I have developed lots of skills around dogs over the last decade, and I can do things that others can't, like control a large number of dogs, administer meds, read how they are feeling, and my favourite is meal time : they all sit in the kitchen patiently, and we have perfected how I call them through one by one by their names, and they do it perfectly! Makes me smile, they really are clever little things!

They are only crated if their owner asks for that. Otherwise they just sleep in their beds. They do broadly all know each other though, as people tend to always holiday at the same time each year, thus the dogs mixing have mixed before. Not always, but mostly.

When I started, of course all the dogs were unknown to me, and we had some HORRIBLE times. Dogs who weed and pood overnight, dogs who wanted up at 4am, dogs who cried or barked all the time. It took me about 2 years to weed all of that out, and what I'm left with now is a pool of about 60 rotating dogs who are all golden.

Honestly, most dogs do not require 2 hour walks. Most of mine are middle aged or elderly, and half an hour is fine. I don't take on any new dogs now, but if I did, and the owner told me their dog needed 2 hour walks, I wouldn't take it on.

Obviously I'm really pleased you have a business set up that works for you, but I think the amount of work probably shouldn't be under estimated - though clearly, the saying about "find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life" comes in here.

Because what you're describing is working from 7-9am, being in the house with no ability to leave from 9am-3pm, working presumably from 3pm to 5pm, maybe being able to go out between 5 and 8:30, and then working again from maybe 8:30pm to 10pm. Presumably 7 days a week if you're covering people's holidays. So 5.5x7 is still actually a 37.5 hour week, plus you're tied to the house for another 42 hours a week.

It's great that you're making a good living from it, but I would find that level of limitation on my life too frustrating I think!

Be careful. I pointed this out and got attacked by the op with a demand to know how much I earnt. As if it’s a competition!

It's 2 hours a day for us. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. I don't think that's outrageous or excessive for most dogs. I'd be annoyed if I paid a dog sitter and they went for 30 mins walks, especially if on lead.

60 dogs but you have 7 of them at a time? How many weeks a year do their owners go off and leave them?

I pay £18 a day for my dog but we only leave her for about 2 weeks a year max. We often take her with us when we’re travelling by car. I have friends who leave their dog a lot more but even so I don’t think it works out at 6 weeks a year. More like four. What’s the point in having a dog if it spends its life with someone else?

So maybe I’m missing something but unless your prices are way above what I’m paying, thats not working out anywhere near £5k a month. I’m sure there are some months when it’s that, but I don’t see how it can be the yearly average.

Maybe you do a lot of daycare but that sounded fairly minor in your OP?

The ops explanations have been all over the place. Doubt much of the story is true at this point tbh

I think she lmikely earns that amount on her best months, maybe one or two a year, and the rest of the year it's way less. We had a dog minder who was great, took the dogs out running for example, but he had to go back to work in the end, as he realised he was never going to make a decent living from it. That had been his original idea, after having been laid off from a previous manual job - I forget what now.

The woman who minds her now is a SAHM and it's a second income for the family. I don't know how much she earns but it's more about being able to be at home when her children come in from school. I've never seen more than two or three other dogs at the same time in her home. Plus her own dog and her cat, TBF. That's still quite a lot in a normal-sized family home.

Only on Mumsnet do you find people so stupid they believe a top 20% salary is "very little". Read some news.

You're right, £5k is only in my top months. In other months it can be as low as £2k. But overall I make a good wage. DH earns £54k, so obvs we have that income too. Mortgage very low, about to end, so that helps.

Yes also to PP, it IS very tying, but I don't mind that really. I'm late 50's, I think it would bother me more if I was younger.

Have not made anything up - what would be the point in that? I would love it if just one other person reading this who was fed up of their job, made the leap to work for themselves. Dogs aren't everyone's cup of tea, but for those that do like them, this is a very easy job to make work - there's a real demand out there.

Someone else mentioned doing similar for cats. I've no idea what the demand would be there (them living in your home). I did offer cat feeding when I started this. Demand wasn't that high, and tbh it was a bit of a pain travelling twice a day to people's houses for very little money. I also found that you often wouldn't lay eyes on the cat, and then people wanted you to go back at silly o'clock to check whether the cat was back. It was too much hassle, especially when the dog side really took off.

£18 is very cheap, it’s more like £35 here in the north west.

I thought you had a big detached house with land! FFS who would want to live next to seven dogs!

What difference does it make to you? They are in my house, not yours! 🙄

Thank you for responding. Not much ado to get a higher gate installed. I do have a big dog now, and I have no doubt she could and would get over the gate was there a threat, but she's very good and has no interest in leaving the garden otherwise. The gate is just to the back garden and garage, not the front door so deliveries not an issue. I am definitely going to consider this when I no longer have my dog (although of course I wish that day wouldn't ever come)!

You can still do this whilst having a resident dog. I had a dog too, for the first 3 years that I did this (then she passed away).

Honestly I started off thinking "Wow I might think of trying that as a way to retire early without loss of earnings", but the more I learn the odder it gets: you have SEVEN dogs at a time in a terraced house and the dogs are apparently indoors all the time except when they're out for their on-leash walk(s)!

Because I wouldn't want to leave my dog stuck indoors all day, and in a terraced house, the neighbours would be very aware of them if they're out in your small garden for any length of time. Seven dogs??

And you presumably charge way more than the €20/£18 (in NI/Donegal hence both currencies) that I pay my dog minder - even though our minder has a garden that the dogs have easy access to, and they go for walks on the beach every day (which our dog is used to as well, so that was a big plus for me.) Otherwise your earnings don't add up.

Something not making sense here.

4 boarding dogs at £30 each = £120 a day
3 daycare dogs at £20 each = £60 a day
= £190
x 30 days = £5,400

You are paying way less than market rate.

Depends how many dogs you board? Round here it's about £27/30 per night, many are licensed but virtually none have any clue about how having a pack of dogs, in a small space, can create huge anxiety and aggression for those dogs. If one dog reacts and becomes aggressive, very few have the experience to sort that out. I'd never leave mine with anyone unless they have behavioural experience. Same goes for a dog walker.

I'm licenced. Have been doing this for many years, and certainly know what to do if there are any problems. But you're right, you don't need to have done any study before you start.

Three day care dogs, if that's every day all the time, that makes a huge difference - you seemed to say at the start that you had a few, rather than that was the main part of your earnings, but maybe I misread. Fair enough then. The rate I quoted is on the lower end of the scale here, maybe because it's well outside the town, so nobody's going to go there every morning before going to work - but it's not way below.

When we had to look for a new person, when the last guy took a salried job instead, the highest I was quoted was £25 a day, and that was a pretty luxurious set up where the dogs had a sort of little living pod where they could have free access to the outdoors and indoors all the time. I didn't take it because I was a bit worried about her own dogs, a doberman and staffordshire terrier plus a third, I forget what now: big anyway. Plus, as I say, I liked that this person takes the dogs to the beach. Though the county council is going to ban dogs from the beaches this summer I hear.

But as someone else said, I wouldn't want to live next door to seven dogs in the garden and nor would I want my own dog to be inside all day long in a terraced house with 6 other dogs. Especially not for £30 a day!

Too intense for me as a job as well, but each to his own I suppose. I'd see myself minding three dogs max; would not want seven!

That's also before insurance, tax and SS contributions of course. Take home would actually be a good bit less I presume.

And THIRTY days a month?? Shouldn't it be more like 21 or 22? Or do people leave their dogs with you in daycare thirty days a month? DO they work non stop or do they just not like hanging out with their dogs at weekends?

This is interesting to me. I have no idea how much our NDN earn but they both quit their jobs about a year or so ago to start a dog walking business and they’re healthily keeping afloat so must be doing ok!

I also know the crazy rates some people pay for doggy daycare, have a colleague who pays for it because they’re both out 12+ hours a day during the week and it’s a needy little dachshund. They pay as much as I used to pay for full time nursery for my DC… so yeah I can buy it!