Who Let The Dogs Out?

When your company cares for 100 dogs or more a week, there's bound to be some craziness. We are very careful with locking doors, checking gates, and following client instructions but just like anything else, there are a lot of things that can go wrong at any given time, and sometimes, they do. Here is one such story.

 Ryan was my first Dog Walker. We had known each other forever and he wasn't getting enough hours at his job at a dog daycare. He reached out and asked if I was hiring. Trying not to sound too desperate, I said yes. I hadn't had a day off in months. The idea of not having a walk for an entire day was almost too tempting to even think about. It worked out well and he worked for me for two years. After over a year, he was staying at a client's house. The client had three dogs, plus her daughter's dog was there. I got a frantic call from mom a couple days into the trip saying that a neighbor had called and all four of her dogs were out. Ryan was done with walks and headed back already and I decided to go out too to help catch them. Nikki (my GM) was with me and we jumped in my car and drove out. The house was far and rush hour was starting so it took us 45 minutes to get there. In that time I called another client who lived a block away and asked if she would be able to help look. She said she had the flu but gamely got into her car and drove around looking for them (have I mentioned how much I love my clients?). She saw them a couple times and relayed their positions, which Nikki then relayed to Ryan, who changed his direction. By the time we showed up Ryan was getting the last dog in the house. He was huffing and puffing but also smiling. That could have been terrible.

The question still remains though, who did let the dogs out? Ryan wasn't home when they busted out, he hadn't touched the gate at all. Mom insisted the gate was secure and he must have let them out or left something open somewhere. Determined to get to the bottom of this, most obviously because we didn't want it to happen again, we went to the gate and investigated. We discovered that the gate had been pushed hard enough that it had popped open. We suspect that a cat or neighbor's dog was on the other side and the dogs were barking and jumping on the gate (something they didn't normally do). With the weight of 4 dogs and that much activity, the gate couldn't hold up. We fixed it up so that it would hold and I took pictures to send to mom. In the end, the dogs were all safe, and the dogs let the dogs out.