Would you let a dog walker walk your dog?

[dab_20]

Noooo way. I do not trust anyone to walk my dogs except me and my family. I will let my friends, as long as I am with them. If anything ever happened to them, I don't no what I would do. My dogs are on the smaller side, but things can still go wrong. Better safe then sorry.

[cali]

no way. Happy is perfect off leash, and bahaves just as well for my best friend as with me, because my best friend is practicly her second mom, yet when she is dogsitting for me, I keep in in a collar with tags, and I ask that she keep Happy leashed. I dont trust that my friend can handle Happy when she see's a strange dog, I cant garantee that if Happy ran accross the street in exitment that she would drop to the ground on the other side of the street and wait, if I am not around. I let Steph walk Misty and Ripley because I know she can handle the pulling, I know because she has a 100lbs golden retreiver that pulls like crazy, and she will often when we walk all 3 together, take my Misty and Dakota in 1 hand and run with them, thats 137lbs dragging her down the street, and she has never lost grip. because of that she is the only one I trust with my pullers, and I trust her to be able to hold Happy back when she is leashed. however just as I dont trust most people with my dogs, I dont trust myself with their dogs either, when I take Perky for walks, I never let her off the leash, even though she has NEVER tried to take off, she sticks closer then my own dogs do, however I cant garantee that she will listen to me without my mom there, when I watch dakota, I will walk him on leash, but I never take him off, even though he is safe off leash, and listens to me better then he listens to his own mom, I dont want to be responsable if something ever happend to him, the only dogs I trust myself with, are my dogs, and I dont trust others with my dogs either.

[Miss Z]

I would, if I had a dog . Not just any random person, of course, that's just common sense. But anyone I knew who is a dog lover or has/had dogs or knows lots about them I would trust. I think I would let them walk the dog with me there first to see how they get on, if they did OK, then I'd let them. When you're busy, it would be helpful to have someone to walk the dog I do dog walking sometimes and the owners are usually very grateful, so it's good for dog, owner and walker.

[Rachel]

When we lived at our previous house, there were three different young girls who (in pairs) used to come by and ask to walk my dogs. Both the dogs I had then were very gentle and well behaved, so I really had no fear of how they would behave with the girls. I kind of got to know the girls a bit first and saw how they interacted with the dogs and had them observe me. They only took them around the block (which took about 10 minutes) and they said they didn't want any pay but I would give them $1.00 (this was 20 years ago).

Since I've lived at this house, no one has ever asked to walk my dogs. Hannah and Tucker are a bit more to handle than my last dogs were, so I would make sure that any youngsters who would ask were capable, but I wouldn't consider it out of the question. What I would be willing to pay would be another consideration. I'm not sure. If anyone is considering doing dog walking, I would suggest making the rate reasonable. Remember too that walking a dog in most areas includes picking up poop.

As you can tell from most of the replies, people want to make sure that their dogs are safe and you need to feel confident that you can handle the dogs you would walk. Before you take on any dogs as walkees, be sure to spend some time with them first in the presence of their owner to get to know them and their ideosyncracies.

[Pam]

I would have to vote *no* along with most of the folks here. Ripley has been known to wiggle out of his collar and run off. Nowadays I use a halter on both of them for their walks so he can't wiggle out, but if his leash was dropped I am afraid he would quickly realize it and dash off. Bella is a tugger on her leash although only for the length of the first couple of houses we pass. After that she settles in.

When I was in elementary school I occasionally would visit a friend who had two St. Bernards in her neighborhood. We often offered to walk those dogs and we did it for free just because they were such awesome dogs. They walked like angels on their leashes and it was so much fun to be around big dogs (I grew up with smallish dogs) and especially such well behaved big dogs.

Bella's breeder actually encouraged people to allow children to come and play with, and walk, her puppies. She felt the socialization was important and also that *a tired puppy is a good puppy.* I can vouch for that last sentence, although I took it upon myself to tire her out. LOL!