Professionalizing dog walking: another day in NYC
The ‘hustle’ I experience day to day in NYC is like nowhere else in the world. People work around the clock, in formal and informal employment, stacking up roles and innovating to monetize their own ideas.
Walking in Central Park, you will become acutely aware of the dog walker economy. Like any city, there are various services set out for pets in NYC. Boarding, grooming, retreats, fresh gourmet meals and more. I would place dog walking at the more casual end of these services. Having someone collect your dog from your home and take them for a walk - either ad hoc or on a regular basis.
In the park the other day, I overheard an interesting conversation between two dog walkers. One was asking the other about setting up an LLC for their business (similar to a private limited company in the UK). Initially, this got me thinking about the innovation landscape here in NYC- people are good at building up from an idea, side hustles get traction and people push to move them forward and expand what they offer.
Then I begun thinking about professionalizing dog walking more generally, and the specific work and health risks of dog walking.
I sometimes see walkers with around 10 dogs in Central Park. This is not low risk work. It is physically and mentally demanding. They have to be tracking the pack, ensuring any dog/ dog human/ dog interactions are safe, monitoring road traffic, cyclists and scooters.
There are various dimensions of risk involved:
Risk to the dog walker from dogs and traffic
Risk to others from dogs
Risk to the dog and other dogs
From dog bites to MSK injury to pre existing conditions leading to to losing control of one dog who then attacks another dog…
How many dog walkers are aware of these risks and have plans in place to control them? How many people hiring dog walkers are thinking about this? What are the potential personal, financial and legal impIications of the downstream consequences of a health and work incident in a dog walker? I have had similar thoughts around informal work in other unregulated settings.
In an innovative landscape, people are pretty good about formalizing their workstreams. But work and health is rarely part of the infrastructure they establish, at least not early on. We cannot expect independent dog walkers or their customers to fund occupational health assessments as standard practice. But an awareness of work and health, and how it relates to the role is an incredibly useful starting point and should be considered by all stakeholders entering into work arrangements. Including stakeholders entering into an arrangement like dog walking!
Great reading! I like your business and occupational health angle to the piece, and the social aspect- the chit chat among dog walkers setting up an LLC! Of course, looking at it from an OH perspective, in some other countries, if it was not the US, we’d be thinking about other zoonotic biological hazards too. About the dangers of group dog walking, of course, there was a serious incident here in Surrey in 2023 when a dog walker was mauled by 8 dogs! So, yes, dog walking should be regulated and there should be more awareness about MSK issues!