Dog Walking1 Walk

Forty-five minutes is a real walk. Long enough for a dog to get out of the yard, cover some ground and — more to the point — stop and sniff things, which is the part dogs actually want and the part that tires them out mentally. A quick lap round the block does very little of that.

If you have two dogs, both come on the one booking at the same price. Two dogs in a house tend to wind each other up when they've been in all day, and getting both out at once is usually more use than getting one out twice.

This suits the dogs who are on their own through a working day most of all. A dog left from seven until six is awake for most of it with nothing to do, and the barking, the digging and the chewed skirting board are usually that rather than bad behaviour. A walk in the middle of the day breaks it up.

It also suits the weeks when you can't. A bad back, a broken ankle, a newborn, a run of long days — the dog's needs don't pause while yours are complicated, and this is a way to keep the walk happening without you having to be the one doing it.

You don't need to be there. We come to the house and collect your dog — a key, a gate code or someone home, whichever you'd prefer — so this works just as well from your desk as from your sofa.

You'll get a photo from the walk, so you know it happened and roughly how it went. If it rains we move the walk rather than cancel it, and you have twelve months to use it.

R200 for the walk, one dog or two.

Before we come

Tell us honestly how your dog is on a lead. Pulling, lunging at other dogs, barking at cyclists, bolting at a gate — none of it is unusual and none of it is a problem, but we need to know before the first walk rather than discovering it on a pavement. The same goes for a dog who's nervous of strangers; we'd rather take the first few minutes slowly than have you worrying about it. We walk on the lead, always. Not as a rule we bend for well-behaved dogs — as a rule. A dog that recalls perfectly for you has no reason to recall for us, and a loose dog near a road is not a risk worth taking with somebody else's family member. If you were hoping for off-lead running, this isn't that service. Heat matters more here than people think. A Paarl summer afternoon is genuinely dangerous for some dogs, and tar stays hot enough to burn pads long after the air feels bearable — the back of your hand held on the road for five seconds is the usual test. Flat-faced dogs, heavy-coated dogs, overweight dogs and elderly dogs are all worse at shedding heat than they look. Talk to us about timing in summer; earlier or later is usually the right answer. Forty-five minutes isn't right for every dog. A puppy's growth plates, an arthritic hip, a heart murmur, a recent operation — all of them are reasons to do less, and doing less is fine. If your vet has put any limit on exercise, tell us what it is and we'll work inside it. Puppies also shouldn't be walked in public before their vaccinations are finished; check with your vet where yours is up to. Have the lead, collar and tag ready, and check the tag is current. A dog that slips a collar with an out-of-date number on it is a bad afternoon for everyone. Decide how we get in, before the first walk. We come to the house and collect your dog, and there are three ways that usually works: you leave a key with us, you give us a gate code, or somebody's home. Any of them is fine — we just need it settled in advance rather than worked out on the doorstep while your dog loses its mind at the window. Tell us where the lead lives too, and anything about the gate, the alarm or the other animals in the house that we'd want to know before letting ourselves in. If you need to cancel, tell us. Things come up — a vet appointment, a sick dog, a change of plan. Get in touch and our support team will sort it out with you, either moving the walk to another day or refunding it. What we'd rather not do is have you feel you've lost a walk because you didn't ask. Two dogs from one home, on one package. A third dog needs a package of its own.