661: Why “Good Enough” Pet Care Isn’t Enough Anymore with Niki Tudge
Time to Pet. Go to timetopet.com/confessional for 50% off your first 3 months.
Our AMAZING Patreon Supporters
What does “professional” pet care actually mean—and why does it matter so much right now? Collin sits down with Niki Tudge, founder of the Pet Professional Guild, to talk about the gap between what pet owners assume they’re buying and what many providers actually deliver. Niki shares the eye-opening real-life process she used to hire a pet sitter for her own dogs—and why it convinced her the industry needs higher minimum standards. Together, they discuss practical ways to educate clients, set non-negotiables, and document care like it truly matters. The conversation ends with a challenge: raise your standards, raise your confidence, and build a business that protects pets, clients, and your team.
Main topics:
Minimum standards in pet care
Client education and expectations
Intake assessments and documentation
Pet first aid readiness
Collaboration and referral networks
Main takeaway: “My minimum level of care for every dog or cat… is the same as if it was my own animal”
That idea challenges a lot of the shortcuts our industry has quietly accepted over the years.
If it wouldn’t be acceptable for your dog or cat, it shouldn’t be acceptable for a client’s—no matter the schedule, price point, or pressure to say yes.
This mindset forces clarity.
It defines non-negotiables around safety, supervision, documentation, enrichment, and medical awareness.
It also gives you the confidence to say no when a service request would compromise an animal’s wellbeing.
When pet care professionals operate from this standard, trust becomes automatic.
Clients may not understand every protocol, but they feel the difference—and that’s what builds sustainable, ethical businesses in the long run.
About our guest: Niki Tudge is the founder of the Pet Professional Guild and a long-time leader in pet care education and professional standards. After a career in business and operations, she transitioned into the pet industry through training, pet care services, and building scalable systems. She has owned and operated multiple pet-focused businesses, including an animal hospital and boarding facility, and is passionate about improving welfare, ethics, and competency across the entire pet care community. Her work focuses on education, collaboration, and raising minimum standards for anyone handling pets professionally.
Links:
Pet Professional Guild: petprofessionalguild.com
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
Follow us on: Instagram and Facebook
Subscribe on iTunes or Spotify
Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet professional guild, dog walking, pet sitting, professionalism, pet care, pet first aid, behavior modification, pet training, pet care standards, client assessment, pet care team, industry collaboration, pet care education, pet care certification, pet care ethics., heat index, dog safety, summer protocol, boarding facility, heat exhaustion, client expectations, personal convictions, ethical business, animal care, pet professional guild, sustainable industry, non-negotiables, trust building, pet sitting, dog walking
SPEAKERS
Collin, Nikki Tuge
Collin 00:00
Hey, welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at time to pet and our wonderful Patreon supporters. Professionalism in the dog walking and pet sitting industry is a topic that always needs more and more attention, especially as we look at ourselves and what it means to raise the bar and reach out to the generations coming up behind us and what we can do to help elevate them and everybody else around us. And so I'm really excited to have Nikki, founder and president of the pet professional guild, on the show, to talk about this, the trajectory of the industry and what they're doing over there, and some of their history as well. Nikki, I'm really excited to have you on the podcast and talk with you today, for those who aren't familiar with you and your background, can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Nikki Tuge 00:49
Oh, my God, I was waiting for that question. All right, so I came into our industry and casually, informally around 2002 I was living in Hawaii, managing a Fairmont Hotel, and got my very first dog, and I'd worked overseas for 20 years, and had my career took me to different places, so it just wasn't conducive for pet ownership. So having got my first dog, I embarked on learning agility, and then I did some coaching of agility, and then, and then realized that I was so much I was enjoying my time with my dog more than I was enjoying my time at my full paid job. So I thought, You know what? We need to we need to do a switcheroo here. So I literally, my husband had gone out sailing, and I literally bought a house on the internet in Florida. And when he got back from sailing, I said, Oh, we're moving. We're moving. I think within about 12 weeks, we were moved anyway, cut a long story short, started my own business, operationalized everything, because that was the background I came from, and realized that I had a really good system that could be licensed to other people. So we actually launched a company called the dog Smith, which was a dog training and pet sitting license. So basically, people can join us, and we provide everything, the marketing, the business, the customer service, the website, all the all the everything. It's like a business in a box. And we outgrew our facility in Florida, so bought an animal hospital and pet boarding facility in Oxford, Mississippi, and when we got there, I was horrified by some of the quality of service that I was seeing in the area, and we could spend an hour just talking about that. So I at the time, I was a member of one of the largest dog training Association, and was really disappointed, because after years and years and years of membership putting pressure on the board to change the sort of approach and the philosophy and the mandate. I said, You know what? I'm just going to start my own so in 2011 we started the pet professional Guild, and Rebecca King and I, because Rebecca was work for us at the she managed our animal hospital and pet resort. She's now our operations director at PPG, and just was overwhelmed by the number of people that joined. Literally hundreds overnight joined, which was incredible, because I did not have a social media presence. I didn't have I wasn't one of those dog trainers that was on all the Yahoo message boards or was out networking. I very much kept myself to myself, so I didn't really have the tentacles to reach that many people myself, but just literally putting a post out and saying that we're starting this new association. The next morning, when I went down to the resort, Rebecca was sitting behind the desk with a pile of applications, because they were coming in in PDF, literally hundreds of them. So right from day one, it was always really important for me at PPG that we were called pet professional guild because I'm a real believer, and some of the programs have rolled out recently affirm this in the pet sitters, dog walkers, dog trainers, groomers, we can't work in isolation. We all form a community that pet owners need to tap into. And as a pet sitter or a dog walker, you should have a comprehensive referral list for a dog trainer, for a you know, a groomer, for a veterinarian, you should be able to provide those for your clients, and vice versa. And from a dog training perspective, so often, as dog trainers, if we're working on behavior modification or putting training plans in place, we need the support of groomers and pet sitters and dog walkers to help help us do that in terms of exercise and counter conditioning and exposure and socialization. So we need to be able to work hand in hand with professionals that can help us with that pet So right from day one, the pet professional guild always had a professional pet care membership level, and it always had a pet owner level, and it always had dog training and behavior and equid and avian and feline, etc. But in the last year, we've actually stepped up our game. And I'll if you want me to explain why, I can tell you why, or if you want me to want to wait a little bit. And so we my husband and I moved house a year ago. We downsized from 24 acres onto five. Acres in Central Florida, and in line with that, my brother in law, my brother in law, lost his life, and my brother in law, for the last 28 years, had always cared for our pets. He'd he was a family member, so whenever we traveled, he came and hung out in the house, and my dogs loved him. And suddenly, out of nowhere, I was left with this awful, overwhelming feeling that I needed to find a professional pet sitter that could care for my animals. And I didn't even know where to start, to be honest, because even though we have a network of dogsmiths, none of them live close enough, nor should I expect them to, you know, come and spend time with my pets. So I put out a call in our area, and I had 10 people come back to me, and I had an elimination process. So the first question was, is, are you licensed and insured? And that was the first gatekeeper. And out of the 10, one was licensed and insured one. And I went, Oh, my God, what do I do with that? This is crazy. I can't just rely on I need, I need a I need a bigger pool to take to gatekeeper two, which is, are you pet first aid certified? I know I've already lost nine at the first gate, and I've got five of the gates to get through. So those that had a semi professional presence online, I thought, well, I'll move them to gate two. So gate two was, then, you know, are you pet first aid certified? And out of the 600, and I just went, Oh, my God, this is amazing. This is incredible. So I interviewed all six, had them come around to my facility, interviewed them, and chose three, and said to them, here's the deal. I travel a lot. Go out. I go away a lot. I'm a runner, and most weekends we go to do endurance runs, long runs. So we go away a lot. We travel to the UK every year for three weeks. We do at least five other trips. I will be a good source of income for you. If you if you will agree to go through my pet care training program, because we have an online certification for pet care providers, and two of them said yes they would. So the next gatekeeper was I have a small dog that has reactivity issues. I knew it would take me two or three sessions with a pet sitter to work through that. So, so I paid both those pet sitters to come to my house for one hour sessions to get my dog comfortable with them. And both of them flew through that with flying colors. And then I tracked in our online school which of the two was working through the program, and only one of them was so we did a day. We did a couple of hours with her in our guest house, our training building, while my husband and I were in our house. And then we went off for lunch, and she came, and then we went and did an overnight, and then we did three nights. And we're at the point now where I'm very, very comfortable, but as I worked through that process, I was absolutely horrified by the number of professionals that are out there who've been in business for many, many years, not not just startups that that don't have any knowledge about canine social behavior and communication, physiology, anatomy, health and handling and pet first aid. Now, I don't expect everyone to operate to the standards that our dogsmiths operate to, but I do. I would expect somebody who's working with animals to fulfill some of that basic criteria. So as a result of that, I went back and said, You know what? We need to up our game at PPG. We need to find we need to attract more pet care providers to come and join us, and we need to provide a lot of education, irrespective of cost to us, because we need to start working on professionalizing this side of the industry, because even though there are a couple of really big associations and there are a couple of big certifications, the I honestly think the majority, if I look at my at the data pool of where I live, which is a fairly congested environment, and you think that I went to Google and searched on 10 pet sitters, and out of the 10, not only one of them was licensed, insured, and none of them were pet first aid certified. You can argue that that is a small set of data, but it's still a set of data in a community of 70,000 people. That is not a good return. That is not good so I then started doing a lot of sleuthing. I went on next door, went on social media, and I was on and I'm on next door, and I go on there every day. A day does not go by that someone doesn't say, I'm going out of town. I need some help with my pets. And literally, 10 or 15 people will go, oh, I can look after them. You know, I help my neighbors. And you think, you know it's all.
Nikki Tuge 09:40
I honestly believe our industry has got past the stage where you just literally throw a key at the 10 year old boy next door and say, Go walk my dog and feed it. Yeah, I mean, I mean, we should be past that. Now, these are sentient beings. They have emotional needs. They have physical welfare needs. The the. Owner is paying money, the professional should have the basic skills to look after that particular species of animal. And I don't just mean when I talk about look after I don't just mean throwing food and water down and a pat on the head. I'm talking about a professional that can go into the home and make sure that the atmosphere is safe, the heating, the ventilation that the home is safe, that the animals eating, they're defecating, they're urinating, they're not showing signs of stress, that the equipment that's being used is appropriate. I mean, I don't think this is too much to ask in our industry. So at the pet professional guild, we have now formed a pet care division. We're now into our third meeting, and we are now working on lots of resources that will be free and available to members to help them to up their game, whether it's, you know, the 10 questions you should ask a pet sitter, or the 10 questions the pet sitter should be asking you, or minimum level of care that should be provided by a pet sitter. And when I talk pet sitter. I'm talking generically about anyone that it has their hands on your pet right, whether that's a dog walker or a pet sitter. And I just, you know, and if we, if we don't lead the charge on this, and I say we, I don't mean PPG, I mean the industry associations, and we don't start educating clients and pet owners, the pet owner doesn't know any better. They don't know what to ask for, right? And it's the same with dog training. If they don't know to ask, do you will you hurt my dog? Will you treat my dog like this? Will you use this piece of equipment? Then? Then we're not supporting our own mission. So such a huge part of that is also reaching out to pet owners and making sure that pet owners understand that when you go out of town or you leave your house or your pet in the home of a professional, a minimum, you should be asking these questions, and these should be the answers that you're receiving at a minimum.
Collin 11:54
I'm really glad you touched on that part, Nikki, because you know, when we think about like, what's driving this, you know, we look at market forces of well, why are these still? Oh, I'll barter for the pet care, right? I mean, like when Megan and I started over what coming up on 14 years ago, you know, we had clients who said, Hey, what's your favorite beer? I'll leave you a six pack so you can take care of my dog, you know. And to still see some of those things coming on now. Oh, like in our local area, on our Facebook, we check every day who's, who's asking for pet sitting and dog walking, you know, keeping track of all that stuff. And somebody was like, Hey, here's my post for my 11 year old daughter's dog walking company. Please come and, you know, and there's so much interest in that. And until pet parents know better, they're not going to seek out things. And I know there. So there's this frustrating, frustration part from the professional side, going, I have the credentials, I've licensed, I'm bonded, I'm insured pepper state and CPR certified. I'm going through all these process, but nobody's asking for it, and so they're still seeking out these so it's, it's a both, and they have to be doing, yeah, as an issue is absolutely talking to clients in the general community. I mean, I've
Nikki Tuge 13:03
always believed in dog training. There's this massive movement in the dog training industry to license dog trainers. And, you know, that's a 20 hour discussion, and my opinion is, and I'm going to take my opinion and give it you in a paragraph, if I can, is that to license something, there has to be an agreed minimum requirement of skills and knowledge that the professional should know. So lawyers are licensed. Real estate agents are licensed because they have to set examinations. There is a board that says, to be a lawyer, you must have done this course, pass the book, pass the boards, and be able to do so and so. And it's the same in our dog training industry. I think the better path for us as an industry, because I don't believe we're going to get to what I just described in my lifetime. I think a better path is to put all our efforts into educating pet owners about safety and consumer transparency and protection, and to say to them, if you want to make sure that your dog is in the hands of a professional that is not going to damage your dog emotionally physically, then these are the questions you should be asking. This is the type of dog trainer you should be hiring, because the consumer is what drives those market forces. And we have reached a point now, because I get calls now from clients that say, Are you a positive reinforcement based trainer, I am okay, good. Now they don't necessarily know what that means, because when you drill down, they really don't. But they have received some education from somebody that they deem to be a guru or reputable that has said, don't go to a dog train that's going to put a shock Collin your dog, because the unintended consequences, or the intended consequences can be damaging to your pet and I think it's the same in the pet care industry. If we can educate pet owners, collectively, all of us and pet owners start saying, I'm not going to employ a professional unless you are pet first aid certified, then that's putting a force into the industry, and more people will go and spend the 100 bucks. And get pet first aid certified. Yeah, until clients put that pressure on, why would they bother? Right?
Collin 15:07
Because there it's going to be wasted, right? It's gonna be money that I'm gonna spend that nobody's interested or cares about. And so should we start looking at going, Okay, how, how do we go about doing that? Though? Like, what does that process look like, of educating the clients, the consumers, about the importance of these things. Because, you know, it's, yeah,
Nikki Tuge 15:26
I think you have to speak to and I hate to use scare tactics, but you know, fear based marketing is why our government operates the way they operate. Right? When you create fear, people go into action mode. It's it's genetic for human beings. We want to avoid pain. We want to work to avoid something that is going to be unpleasant for us. And I think, you know, I remember years ago at the dog Smith, we developed this matrix that said, this is what the dogsmith offers at a minimum. And it was pet first aid certified pet care technician. We understand health and handling, canine communication. And then on the on the other column, it said, your local pet sitter, the odds are no, no, no, no, no, no. And I remember several local pet sitters emailing me and saying, How dare you leverage against us? And I said, Can you answer yes
Speaker 1 16:18
to all those questions, knowing full well they couldn't, don't complain. Go get
Nikki Tuge 16:24
yourself educated, right? So now an attachment to that matrix is, and I say this to clients, it's all very well hiring the 14 year old boy or the pet center that doesn't have any training. But I could give you, if we had an hour, I could give you 20 or 30 examples where our dogsmiths have saved a pet's life because they were pet first aid certified. So do you want your dog choking or bleeding or with heat stroke, with a with someone that doesn't know how to bridge the gap before that dog gets to a veterinarian? Because that can be the manner, that can be the difference in your animal surviving or not surviving, right? So I think there are lots of lots of ways that you can sort of highlight to a pet owner. You know, your company is an example. You don't get pet first aid certified because you just think it's good to put on a business card. You do it because you want to be sure that when you're looking after somebody else's pet in the event of an emergency, you can deal with it because you care about the animal. Now, at the minimum, you don't want to be sued for being negligent, right, which is a possibility, too. And I mean, I'll give you another quick example. And I think this is, I think this sort of speaks to it. So what the very first time that the lady who looks after our dogs came to look after my dogs that we were going away for two or three days, I printed out what we used to use as a kennel card in our boarding facility that has dog's name, weight, any medication they're on, and then five times a day, at specific times, when they go out for a walk, urination, bowel movement, appetite, medication, demeanor. And I was explaining to her and her business partner that if you're, if one person's looking after an animal, and so let's say you're, you're looking after a dog, and you go to the house on day two, and because you were there on day one, you know, that animal didn't eat very much. And on day two, you go on that's still not eating a lot. I'm a bit worried, you know, I need to do something. I'll get some fried chicken, or I'll get a burger, or whatever your protocol is for getting that eating going. So that checklist wouldn't necessarily help you. But if you go one day and Megan goes another day and one of your employees goes a third day, and nobody's documenting whether this animal is eating or pooing or having a urination, suddenly, on day four, the animal's in trouble, and nobody can account for how often the animal's eaten, has it urinated? What was the quality of its stall? So nobody's really monitoring or observing how well this animal is doing in the absence of its owners. Is it stressful? So as I explained to the lady looking after my pets and her partner, if you care for my pets, and when I get back, one of them is really sick, and you have not taken the necessary action, whether you like it or not, you're negligent, and whether you like it or not, if I sue you, I'm probably going to win, because you can't prove to me through those four days that you have done any monitoring or tracking. Now, if you fill out a kennel card and you check five times a day, appetite, urination, bowel movement, bit bit loose at the end of those five days, even if something has gone wrong, you have not been negligent, because the pet care professional you have observed and monitored. Now, technically speaking, if it got that bad, the animal should have gone to a vet, but we all know how many pets are cared for by a pet care professional, and they grew. Gradually go downhill the longer they're with the pet care professional, because the owner has been absent for an extended period of time. And how many times do you hear clients say, Well, I picked my dog up from day from boarding, and it had lost four pounds in a week, and the boarding facility didn't even know when we had a boarding kennel. Every single dog that boarded with us was weighed every three days, so that if we had a dog in there for two or three weeks, we could monitor their weight, because in our dog losing four or five pounds, that's a lot of weight for a dog to lose, right? Yeah. So there's just simple, simple procedures like that that help professionalize what we do that to a lot of pets. That is, they may not have the mechanism to do that. So at PPG, we're going to create the forms, we're going to create the protocols, we're going to create the operational definitions so that membership can grab it and go. That makes sense. I'm going to use that.
Collin 20:54
Have you heard of time to pet? Dan from NYC, pooch has this to say?
Speaker 2 20:59
Time to bet, has been a total game changer for us. It helped us streamline many aspects of our operation, from scheduling and communication to billing and customer management. We actually tested other pet sitting softwares in the past, but these other solutions were clunky and riddled with problems. Everything in time to pet has been so well thought out. It's intuitive, feature rich, and it's always improving.
Collin 21:19
If you're looking for new pet sitting software. Give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confessional
Collin 21:30
you mentioned that the overtime thing of we do regularly in home care for our clients who have traveled for a month or more at a time, you know, coming over four times a day, and multiple, multiple employees coming and going from that home. And you're right. We view it very much as medical charting every time we're over. Of this is yes, to inform the pet parents of what's going on, but this is a log of how things are going. And fewer things are satisfying, more satisfying when the clients come back and they have a question, and I can screenshot a statement from a previous visit and send it over to them and say, here's the report on that. And this, this, this mentality of thinking of more than just ourselves and how we can best serve the client. I feel like a lot of that comes from some confusion and misconceptions around, you know, even just language and requirements. You know, you mentioned things like licensing. I know a lot of people will go talk to their local county or their city and say, Do I need a license to be a dog walker? And they'll say no, but what they forget is that, do I need a license to be a registered business? Well, that's right, that's a different question. And so there's this, unfortunately with the state of the industry, it's still not widely recognized by a lot of agencies as being legitimate. And so they think, Oh, it doesn't apply. And these things happen. And so there is this onus, though, is still on us as the business owner to go. Am I actually asking the right questions? Do I know the right questions to ask so that when I show up, I'm already, you know, moving this process ahead?
Nikki Tuge 23:03
No, I mean, I mean, you know, asking the right questions. I mean, we used to do, we had, we would always do a free in home consultation. Most pet sitters do that, but we would go with a checklist for the home and a checklist for the pet, for the pet profile, and we'd ask the client to fill out the information beforehand. Many clients don't, so therefore, you spend your time when you get to the house, doing that, but, but here's a good example. Does your does your pet have any ailments? No. So the pet sort of goes fine. Nobody says, When was your pet last ill? Has your pet had any surgery? Does your pet have any disability? You know, and I hear stories like someone's looking after a black Labrador, and on day three, the Labrador has a seizure, and they are freaking out because the owners on a cruise ship this that, you know, as far as they were concerned, the dog was healthy and happy. And when, when the owner gets back the you know, the pet sitter says, Well, we have to take it to the vet, and it costs this much, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the only goes, Oh God, we forgot to tell you that she regularly has seizures. And you just think, you know, it's all very well the pet owner forgetting, but the pet sitter should have the mechanisms to be drilling down on that question, right? I mean, you know, I had a pet stay with me many years ago. It was one of the first pets that I boarded at my property, and I noticed on day two that the pet had a slight limp in its back end. And I looked and thought, Oh, that's not good. And it was, fortunately, it was a friend's dog, and I call them, and she goes, Oh, didn't you know he has a metal plate in his thigh? And I and I didn't, and my immediate reaction to myself was, shame on you, Nikki, because you should have bloody well known that, right? Because I'd skipped the intensity of my client interview because of familiarity with the client, because I thought I knew the client, and I thought, you know, surely that would have come up in conversation, but no, it didn't. So, you know, there's all kinds of things that pet owners don't know. What you need to know. But also, if a pet owner has not been hiring professionals, why would they think to even be asked those? Questions, if it's never happened before, yeah, yeah.
Collin 25:04
They don't know. They look at a lot of times. They'll look at our intake form. That's like, you know, 30 questions, and that's just before, that's before we show up to in their home. And it's like, why are you asking me about this? Can't you just come over? Can't you just show up? Can't we just move forward with this? And so there is some tension there. Of sometimes the Collin, the clients who have not used a professional before, get frustrated by the systems and processes that we're trying to put into place. How do how do we help communicate the necessity and walk them through that of something? Because honestly, Nikki, sometimes it feels like we are throwing clients into like a buzzsaw, of like, welcome to the company,
Nikki Tuge 25:42
yeah, especially, like you said, especially if, in the past, it's been, Oh, can you send the kid round a couple of times to, you know what feed the dog, right? Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, we always, we believe that really professional pet care was a two part process. Number one, it's initial assessment. It's seeing the dog or the cat or the bird in the home, looking at their demeanor, understanding what they eat, what their personality is like, what their appetites like, what their medical history is. That's your baseline. And then when they when you care for the animal in the absence of the owner, is daily monitoring and observing, which is what we discussed earlier, with the, you know, the sort of mechanics for checking and you can't monitor and observe if you haven't got a baseline, because what are you monitoring and observing against? There's also no point in doing a really lovely intake procedure and getting an assessment if you're not going to then monitor, you know, and observe. You have to do both, because otherwise, how do you know if the animal in front of you is stressed if you haven't seen them when they're relaxed? You know? And another good point on that is we used to do a lot of home assessments for clients that would not be going away for six months, and we had a three month window if we did a home assessment for you, because you were shopping for a pet sitter, we said to you, if you don't book for three months, we will come back and do this process again, because we want to see the animal. We don't want there to be a six month lag between when we saw your pet and then we suddenly turn up when you're not there. Because A, the animal might not be comfortable, and B, A lot can change in an animal's life. In six months, it can deteriorate. It could now have an illness or a disability that we didn't know about. So, you know that's also important. Yeah, we see
Collin 27:25
that commonly. When people get puppies, they get really excited. They got a puppy that will come over to the initial assessment, and they just want us on standby, just in case. And then two months, three months, six months, eight months go by, and then they're like, oh, I need you. And I'm looking at the information, I'm going, well, this is from a two month old puppy,
27:44
no, five year old dog.
Collin 27:48
Has the feeding changed? You know, it's just and it's hard because, like you said, like a lot of the owners themselves, don't know the information they need to give us, and so in their perspective, quote, nothing has changed because they've been living with a dog for the past five years and haven't needed us. And so it's kind of this recency bias that they bring into it. And so it is beholden on us. And then that is a I'm gonna I'm just gonna say it is a burden that we have to bear of We are the ones who then go, it is my responsibility to ask these questions, because you're not going to think about it, and nobody else is going to bring it.
Nikki Tuge 28:22
To bring it up. Right? Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. And, I mean, we always the other thing we tend to do when we talk about pet care as well as we always focus on dogs, don't we? But there are more cats in the US, and there are dogs and and I think it's quite sad, because a lot of pet owners with cats just think, I don't need a pet sitter. I'm going for three days. I can just throw food around and put extra little boxes down. But if a cat lives with a family and is an affiliate, you know, with its family, it wants, it probably wants to see some, you know, human contact. We used to have policies that, will I say, we used to, we still do that. We won't care for a dog in the client's home with let with less than three, three daily visits, because we feel a minimum. That's what we're prepared to do. And we actually had to change our stance on cats, because for cats, we used to do twice, and we got a lot of pushback from clients, so we agreed we do it once a day, because something that some pet sitters don't know is that cats can get into serious medical trouble much sooner than dog can. If a cat doesn't eat within 24 hours, you can, you need to start worrying, right? I mean, they can start having kidney issues, liver issues, so even with cats, we explain to clients that we need to come in and monitor bowel, urination and appetite once every three days is not enough, and if you have multiple cats, we need to set up the environments that we can monitor multiple cats and get figure out if each cat is eating, drinking and going to the bathroom. And you know, years ago, we had a case where we literally went into a house every day and the cats were so terrified we didn't see them. And. I was really worried, because there were three cats in the house, and you're emptying the litter box, but you don't know that all three cats are functioning properly. It's a crapshoot, right? You sort of look at it and go, Well, there's lots of, you know, bowel here and poop here, and urine, but you just don't know. And if you can't see a cat, you know, you don't, not all cats are going to want you handling them, but if you can visibly see their demeanor, and are they cleaning themselves, and is their body language looking okay, at least that gives you a level of comfort,
Collin 30:34
yeah, getting, getting eyes and hands on as much as possible. You know, it's an interesting the kind of evolution of the cat care specifically, because I know, like when we first started again over a decade ago, a lot of our cat clients did want every three days, every couple days, and it was very much a, well, I'm just going to put out a couple extra pans of litter, and I've got a big bowl of food here. They're good. And then it kind of like that was kind of frowned upon. And now we're getting a surge, a surge of the litter, robots, right? The automatic fountains, the automatic feeders. So a lot of the cat that stuff has been, you know, it's run by robots now it's automatic. And a lot of pet sitters, then question. They go, Well, what am I there for? And I think, instead of going, well, I can't scoop litter, I can't put out food, and I can't refill a water bowl, so I'm at a job. We can go well now I'm free to do the enrichment, the engagement, the assessment of the pet. I'm more free to focus on that and and what we find is a lot of the pet owners, the cat owners specifically, that's what they want. They want us to be there. A lot of the people who book our hour long visits are cat owners, because they want us to sit with their cats, play cat TV on YouTube and all this stuff, you know, like so there's as that part evolves, we have to look at that and say, What is my purpose for being here, and what kind
Nikki Tuge 31:56
of Collin I'm so glad you mentioned, mentioned enrichment, because about three years ago, at diagnostics, one of my other businesses, we rolled out an enrichment program, and we rolled it out specifically for pet sitters, because I looked at the industry and said that the days of just going into a home and water and food and a little bit of exercise is not enough, right? And I want, and we are dogsmiths, rolled out the service, and we've had hundreds of people go through the certification program. We've all said they've implemented enrichment services. So rather than selling a lunch visit or a dinner visit, it's now it's an enrichment visit. And you go to the home, and you assess the home, assess the owner, assess the pet, and you can set up an enrichment program for that pet, where you do the training, or the owner does and it goes everything through scent, work, play, you know, cognitive enrichment, visual, auditory and people are now sort of now leveraging that as a service against just that normal in home, pet sitting visit, because it is so much better for the welfare and well being of the individual animal. So you're absolutely right. Even if you don't need to do, you know, litter, food and etc, there is still so much that you can do, and you still need to make sure that the home safe, right, that the integrity of the homes there and the yard, you know, I mean, how many pets it is, one of the things on our checklist was, you know, the condition of the yard is. The fact is, does, is it? Does the fencing have integrity? Are there any escape holes? Because, you know, some of the homes you go into, you go in the backyard and there's a bloody big hole under the fence and the owner's gone. Oh, yeah, I haven't filled it yet. Well, we're not looking after your animal letting them into the yard. If there's a big bloody hole under the fence, we need to do something about that right before I am now suddenly responsible for your home and your pets. I mean, that's a huge responsibility for somebody, and because it's such a huge responsibility, it's the reason why we should be professional about the services that we're offering, because we're not responsible. I mean, I have two dogs. These. My dogs are my bloody kids. I mean, I don't have children. My dogs are my kids. So when I'm asking someone to come and care for them, that's the equivalent of somebody going, here have my seven month old baby for a week. You wouldn't just hand your baby over to the 14 year old neighbor next door?
Collin 34:16
No, I'm glad you mentioned the fence thing that actually brought to mind. We work on training like, go into the yard, walk the perimeter. See, pick up look. Because there was a time several years ago where I went into a backyard from the from the deck, and you looking out to the yard, everything looked fine. But as I walked the perimeter, I noticed that the boards on the very back of the fence, furthest away from the house, were pushed so far out that the nails were barely still in, and these boards were about to fall out. And it turned out the owner's son had just started soccer, and he was practicing his kicks against the back fence, and was slowly pushing those boards out with it, with this, because it was an older fence, it was kind of falling apart. It was like, Yeah, this is one of those things, of who else is going to get out here? And. Look at this fence and check it.
Nikki Tuge 35:03
No, you're absolutely right. I mean, the very first pet business we had was a pet waste cleanup company. It was a franchise that we bought, and we bought it just to sort of get our feet wet in the industry and see if it was something that we wanted to move into. And I can't tell you how many yards my husband would end up with a toolkit in the back of his truck because a technician had phoned and said that the fence is broken and we'd go around there and fix the bloody fence for the owners. And they only, oh my God, I didn't know. So it's like when you tell a pet owner, do you know that your dog's pooping out blue plastic? Is there something your dog may have eaten? And the owner goes, Oh my God, no, I have no idea. Because most pet a lot of pet owners, don't even pick up their pet's weight. I mean, when my dog's going to the bathroom, I'm following it around. I want to see what it's poops like, because I want to see how healthy My dog is, right? Yeah. I mean, how often do we as pet care professionals, do we tell a dog, a pet, a dog owner, I think your dog has worms.
Speaker 1 35:54
I saw worms in the stool. Yeah. And they go, are you joking?
Nikki Tuge 35:58
Because they don't see it, because they're not looking or they're not doing it. So again, these are all the types of things that as professionals, we should be doing and monitoring and feeding back to pet owners about Yep, and
Collin 36:08
giving that and I know we've had several clients who will say, Oh, and you'll probably end up getting some pictures of poop while you're away, just so that you keep up to date. And the number who initially say, Oh, don't I don't want to see that, but it's fascinating, because once they start getting that information, all of a sudden, they're like, how's my dog's poop today? Is it okay? Like, is it is it good, right? And it's part of that exposing them to a better thing, and
Nikki Tuge 36:30
absolutely too often. And isn't it, sorry to interrupt, but isn't it great that you've now got a pet owner that's recognizing that as a professional it's actually more professional of you to be sending pictures like that than sending a picture of a dog playing when you haven't been monitoring and observing it for health. I mean, I tell all my clients, your dog fundamentally will be safe, emotionally, physically and from a welfare and well being. And after all, that's covered, we'll throw in a bit of fun, but we're not going to throw in fun at the expense of us doing the basics that we should be doing to care for your animal professionally. Yeah.
Collin 37:04
And unfortunately, what a lot of this comes down to is from from the professional side, we can get caught up in the mindset of competing on price for our services, and we can start comparing to what other people are doing, and we then devalue what we've because what we're doing is we're kind of pursuing like we mentioned, like with the cats, like the the scoop letter, throw out food and refresh water. That's kind of a commodity at this point. That's kind of, that's base level, and that's the
Nikki Tuge 37:28
core product, right? That's what the pet owner is actually paying for. But the augmentation, what you might deliver versus another pet sitter are fundamentally different. So you can't say, well, we charge $25 but why? Why Why do you charge that much when he charges 60? Because you're not comparing apples and apples, right? You're just not comparing apples and apples. Yeah, I mean, and I always tell when I just business consulting, I tell people, the minute you start comparing on price, it is a race to the bottom. Let's see who goes out of business first, right? Because that's that's not how you operate a business. You don't race to the bottom and go into price wars. You look at what you're offering, what's your core product, what's your augmentation, and how are you leveraging your marketing against that so that clients go you know what? I want to pay the 60 bucks as an example, because I'm getting a B, C, D and E, I don't want to pay the 25 and just get a chimpanzee doing the service. I know,
Collin 38:23
I know you started off a little bit about, you know, why you named it the pet professionals guild, because you were interested in attracting groomers and trainers Walker, you know, all the everybody together, yeah. How, how do you feel like we should be working together? How does it, how does it look to foster collaboration between them, especially in our local communities.
Nikki Tuge 38:43
I'm really glad you asked that, because we've just rolled out a brand new program at professional guild called behavior teams, working together. Because we looked at it and said, You know what? In geographical areas, we need to have, you know, the old business network, where people meet once a month, and there's a, you know, all the different bit, there's a representation from each business, and they have that BNI group, something similar, like that, but with pet professionals, so that in a geographical area, me and you and I am a dog trainer, you own a pet sitting company, we get together and say, You know what, we're going to be part of the behavior professionals in Florida, in, I don't know, Clearwater, let's Go find three other pet sitters and a few dog trainers and a behaviorist and a veterinarian and a groomer who philosophically, all agree with us. They agree to work to a minimum standard for referring, and we're going to put ourselves together as a team of professionals that can help service our local community. So we created this program with an operational guide that says behavior teams will operate in the following way. This is a team agreement about how you'll behave together. This is the minimum level of care you all agreed to do. This is a geographical area you will cover. And we're we're actually in the process right now creating the first website for the first behavior professionals group that's rolling out. So we've been piling. Seeing it for the last three months, and we've now got our first team of eight people who are a collection. There's a groomer, there's pet said, There's dog walkers, dog trainers, veterinarians, veterinary behaviorists, an animal communicator. There's, you know, animal masses, and they are now the first team of behavior professionals in Lincoln, in the UK. So we're creating a website. They have their own URL, they have their own blog. They can get their own sponsors. So collectively, if a client's looking for a pet professional in Lincoln, they land on that website, fill out the form, and the person that's best suited to service that client picks it up. So if it's somebody with a puppy, and on your team, you've got a puppy expert, that's who it goes to. If it's someone that needs help with behavior modification, it goes to the trainer that can do that. Because, I believe, and this actually plays out factually, in an industry where there are multiple service providers, it is actually better to have competitors than to open an industry where it is not firmly established and there isn't competitors because you don't have market awareness. So the pet industry, there is enough work for everybody. We can work together as a tribe or a village to support the local community. We shouldn't be working against each other. We've reached a point in our industry. When I first became a dog trainer, I took the business aggression, take it separation and grads, take it puppies, take it reactivity, take it I wasn't an expert at all of them. I couldn't be an expert at all of them. I haven't been around on the planet long enough to be an expert at all of them. So as I've grown older and matured as a business person, I now know what I'm good at, but more importantly, I know what I really enjoy doing. So that's the only business I take. So when I get clients coming through my website and I go separation anxiety, not interested in doing dealing with that, I have a whole team of people that I refer to. If something comes through that's dog sport problems, they refer to me because you can't be the expert at everything. There are now too many disciplines in the pet industry, so choose what your lane is, become highly credentialed at it, be professional, and build a team of other professionals that you can refer to. So that's what behavior professionals is all about. It's recognizing that we all have different strengths. We all have different areas we want to focus on. But collectively, pet owners need a group of professionals. They don't need one professional that won't refer them somewhere else because they don't want to lose the business, you know, like a pet sitter that says that recognizes that this client's dogs. And here's a really good example. I'm a believer that animals should either be taken from their home or taken from the owner. They shouldn't be taken from both. So my dogs, if I'm going away, I want my dogs in my home. It's where they're most comfortable. But I also recognize that there are some dogs that can't be left at home because they because they either will damage themselves. They have pika or pika or they've got severe separation anxiety. So I've seen in the past, pet care providers that have seen those types of animals and have struggled through the service because they don't want to refer it out to somebody else, even though that is the best thing for the client, right? Because not every dog is the ideal daycare dog, not every dog is the ideal pet sitting dog. Not every dog is the ideal boarding dog. So, and I'm just going to give you another example. When we first bought this animal hospital and boarding facility, the first day of ownership, I just observed that the existing team was in place, and out of the 40 odd dogs that were there for daycare, five of them didn't leave the kennels. So I was like, why not? Because they're aggressive. So why are we taking money off the pet owners for daycare because they want the dog to be here. Does the owner know the dog is not in a daycare group? Well, no, well, then we're doing something significantly wrong. This isn't this is not ethically correct. So the very second day of my ownership of this facility, I had to sit in the lobby and wait for these owners to pick up their dogs, take them to the office and sit them down, very professionally, and say, Are you aware? They were furious. They were not aware they dropped their dog off and went off to work thinking their dog was playing with Lassie all day in the sandpit, in the water pool having Kongs, and it wasn't happening. So I explained to them, your dog is not the right candidate for daycare. So their comeback is, but I can't leave the dog at home. Okay, then let's do day boarding, where we walk your dog three times a day. We give them snuggle, love, time with a technician. They get a Kong at lunch, a frozen Cong at lunchtime. Same, same amount of money. But let's be open and honest about the service we are providing for your dog. Let's not lie to clients. So that's the type of thing where, if we hadn't been able to do that, if we were just a daycare, we. We as a professional, I should have had a cadre of pet sitters or dog walkers where I could have said to the owner, you know what your dog is. Not ideal for us. I'm going to give up the $4 a month that you pay me, because I think that your dog should go to a pet sitter where it can go to their home on its own. And I know the very person that you can trust to do that. Let me refer you to them. That's the way we should be working as an industry. We shouldn't be going, you know what? I want the money, even though it's not best for the dog, and I don't want to refer to somebody else, so I'm just going to keep it because that's that's what that happens more than we like to admit, yeah,
Collin 45:34
well, you know, and unfortunately, a lot of that comes from where we think we're doing the best by the client, because we're doing what they want. You said it right there. Oh, well, the client wants them here, but then it's up to us to go. But is this the right thing? Right? Is that what we're supposed to be doing?
Nikki Tuge 45:50
And how can we tweak our services? How can we accommodate this pet, this owner, so that there's it so it's a win, win for everybody? Yeah, right. We didn't have a day boarding fit. I'm looking at it going well. I've already got five clients for my day boarding. You know what? We set up a day boarding comes in at seven, leaves at five, four walks in the dog park. We had a three acre dog park, four walks in the dog park, breakfast and lunch, if you want, to a frozen Kong, a snuggle love session. And we put it on our website, and we had more and more people buying into it, because they also recognized that their dog wasn't right for daycare, but they also didn't want their dog home alone.
Collin 46:29
Megan and I started this podcast with a simple vision to share the stories of pet sitters and dog walkers across the world. That vision continues every single week, people coming on and sharing their stories and insights and their expertise. The podcast is made possible from people sharing and being part of the community. The heart of the show is and always will be. Listener support. Our Patreon supporters help keep the show independent, consistent and focused on the real needs of you. Their support helps cover the production costs, the long conversations, and allows us to keep showing up week after week and make sure that this show is free for every listener. If this podcast, if this show, has helped you in any way, if it's helped you think differently about your business, your boundaries, or your role in this industry. Supporting the show is one way to help it continue. Learn more about supporting us at pets that are confessional.com/support, Nikki. Something that I'm impressed by is you have big ambitions and plans and desires for the industry and pushing people forward. Do you ever get overwhelmed or discouraged by that?
Nikki Tuge 47:42
No short answer, no, I don't know. Because, well, I think, first and foremost, I love animals, and I think that every animal deserves to be cared for, if not by their owner, by a professional that meets a minimum level of service. And I don't think I mean, look some of the stuff we do, at the dog Smith. Look at the dog Smith. When we first launched the dog Smith, we launched it as the Mercedes Benz of pet care. We didn't want to be the Walmart of pet care. That was never our plan. We wanted to pick the highest level of clients, the clients that were fully invested in their animals. Didn't mind paying for services and wanted the very, very best, but not everybody wants to operate at that level. There is a there's also a middle ground, but I do think that there is a minimum level of care that everybody should be meeting. I mean, you go talk to a veterinarian, veterinarians have a minimum level of care which they're ethically bound to, and a good example of that is this. When I first moved to the States, 30 years ago, my very first dog, I took them in to be spayed, and the vet said to me, can you sign the form here to approve the pain meds? And I went, what? That isn't part of your minimum level of care. And it was a very rural vet. And he said, No, a lot of clients pushed back on that and I said, Well, of course, you give my dog as many drugs as possible to make it as pleasant as possible. Right sign on the dotted line. Flash forward, 20 years later, when we bought this animal hospital. We own the we own the building and rent and released it to the vet, and my office was upstairs, and I became quite good friends with the vet, and on the first week we were there, I asked her, What's your minimum level of care? And she immediately pulled out. And I was so impressed by this. There were certain things that she refused to do, and would happily turn clients away. So at the time, she was using an anesthetic that was very expensive and just becoming available, and it's the one that most vets use now they can reverse it really quickly, which means it's so much safer. And she said, Nikki, my minimum level of care for every dog or cat walking into the surgery is the same as if it was my own animal, and if the owner doesn't want to pay for pain meds, then I will not do surgery. That is my minimum level of care. Yeah. You know? And I mean, that's the way we should be. We should have non negotiables and a minimum level of care that every animal meets. And that's how our products or services should be priced. That's our core product. Our core product includes initial assessment, observing and monitoring, you know, Bubba, Bubba, on and on. That's the minimum level of care. Now, if you then want to augment that with these additional services, let me know, and that then is an add on, right? But that's our minimum level of care. And I don't think enough people are operating at a minimum level of care, I think. And I'm not, it's not Walmart, it's dollar store, right? It's like, as cheap as you can go, you know, I mean the client that says to us, you know, in a we used to do a standard 30 minute visit, and we go there to do the initial assessment. I was actually talking about this only three days ago to our pet care team at PPG. They had four salamanders, like 12 parrots, four dogs, half a dozen cats. And as soon as I and they hadn't filled out any forms before I got there. And other than the the one form that I insisted, which highlights red flag behaviors for safety, going in someone's home for safety. And when I got there, I said the minimum, the minimum visit for your home will be an hour and a half. Yeah, so it's not going to cost you $30 it's going to cost you 90. And she goes, absolutely not. And I said, there is no way any professional can come into your house in 30 minutes and adequately do what is required to care for all these animals. And I was with a brand new pet setter that we'd hired. This was the final training. Was to come along on a meet, meet and greet. And I and the woman argued, and I said, Look, this isn't a good fit. Let's leave it. And I just left the house, and as we got in the car, she said to me, she goes, Are you gonna we're gonna turn the client away. It's like, Absolutely. If we can't care for those pets to our own internal minimum standard of care, we're not doing it.
Collin 51:57
Yeah, yeah. What's not doing it? What? Because, hey, what's the point? If you know you're not giving the best care because you're trying to meet a price point. And somebody,
Nikki Tuge 52:04
all she wanted was someone just to go in and throw food down.
Collin 52:08
Yep, yep. You know, we took on a client who had 12 cats, six were her own, six were fosters. And the amount of planning it took to get to the point where she could travel of agreeing on the number of visits to, you know, hour long visits every day, so making sure the, you know, working on the the arrangement, having the Fosters in their own separate room, having their own baskets of goods, having this all stuff, having measured out like this. It was a detailed process. And at every step, you know, Megan and I were, at each step, going, if she doesn't do this, we're not moving forward, right? If we can't,
Speaker 3 52:42
because we knew that compromise on your own standards, right? Right? Our team would be miserable.
Collin 52:46
I would be miserable trying to do that on 130 minute visit a day. Nobody wants that. Yeah, and we knew that she would get back after a week and a half of travel and not have a home that's cared for and have cats that were not doing well, like it's just we knew that. And so finding that, and so that takes each individual business to some extent, going, what would I want? And then there are these professional organizations. You know, you're guilt here of going, there are standards here, of this is what we think are minimums, and this is where we go. If it's below this, we we have to say no. And that gets hard, especially when we're in that scarcity mindset as a business of going, What do you mean? Say, No, it's a client. Money's money, right? And it's just not, yeah.
Nikki Tuge 53:27
Well, you know, the other thing is, and I spend quite a lot of time with Veronica Patel from dog biz. She's a colleague of mine, and we've become friends over the years. And I used to do a lot of business consulting for pet owners, because I came out of a business environment, and we we laugh sometimes about the one fact that I have never and Veronica says the same about the hundreds of people that have gone through their business consulting programs. Nobody who we have convinced to increase their prices has come back and said it was the wrong move. Most people say that their business took off as a result of doing that, because not only they increase their pricing, that they were able then to start selecting clients more appropriately, clients that fit their demographic, that they felt really comfortable working with, which meant they were doing less, doing less, fewer services, and making more money. And it was a win win for everybody. So when businesses say, well, especially with new businesses, well, I've looked at how much everybody else is charging, and I'm going to charge $5 less. It's like, no. Charge $5 more. What are you doing? Yeah, yeah. You know you've got a good business model. You've got a good core product. You've augmented it well. You've got flexibility in how you deliver it. You know what your marketplace is. You know the demographic of your client. You understand what, where your marketing triggers are and your hooks just go out and do it, you will not regret it, because that is far better than doing what the inverse of that is, people that, and I used to see this all the time, they open a business, and they go into the marketplace with a really low price, and they get inundated with clients, because their clients are price shopping. So. And after six months to a year, they're busy, busy, busy, and they're losing money, and you go, now you have to start shedding these clients, because you basically have, this is like you've gone for the low hanging fruit. You're not making any money. There's no you. I mean, if you look at yield management, right? You only have, let's say, in a day, you only have 1010, appointment sessions that you can do if you fill those 10 sessions with a $30 client at the end of the day and your week now fills. You might be fully booked, but look at how much income you're actually bringing in. You could then say to yourself, you know what on the slots that are really high demand, lunch and dinner, I'm going to double my price. I'm going to take fewer clients, I'm going to make more money. I'm not going to run around like a crazy lunatic. And then if you need to, you can offer a slightly lower rate for the service times that are not as popular, so that so you can accommodate the rescue client or the client that's on a slightly lower because one of the pushbacks we always get is, well, if I charge too much, they won't be able to afford it. You know, yes, you can argue that, but, but you won't be putting bread on your own table. So do you want to starve? Or do you want the other person to not have quite as much food? You know? And I always tell my clients, or my dog Smith, or whoever I'm consulting with, if you have a successful, sustainable business model. A good example. We spoke about this earlier. Collin, I don't work on Fridays. Fridays is a rescue day for me. The rescue group that I do work with knows that I will take free consultations on a Friday if it gets referred from them. I can do that comfortably because I have a successful business, I have nice income and I'm making a good profit. So because I've secured my own level of income, I can now give back by rolling out free programs, by spending 40 hours a week at PPG for doing free consultations for rescue clients. But if I don't look after the initial need of sustainability for myself, I can't do any of the other fun stuff afterwards.
Collin 56:58
Right, right? Yeah, well, and that's we that's thinking much bigger about the purpose of our business and things that we can do right of thinking more long term thinking, How do I give back? Because we're caregivers at heart, and many of us want to be involved with rescues or with our local associations or local groups or whatever that is. But when we look at the finances, we go, Well, how do I do that if I don't have and it all starts with CHARGE appropriately, make sure that you are taken care of. And then you actually that inherently builds space in your day. And we, we see it too, where people do that same cycle that you just went through, where they under charge because they're new, and all of a sudden they're just booked solid. And what they try and make, you know, maybe they try and make that step of, okay, I'm gonna hire now. I need to, I need, I think I need to hire, and you bring on help, but there's no card.
Nikki Tuge 57:44
You can't pay commission on it, right? Because no margin. There's no margin.
Collin 57:47
And then they're left going, Well, how do I make this work? And then they feel stuck. And instead of going like it, all starts back with that, you are running a business, and it's okay to charge for this, and it's okay to make money, yeah? Absolutely. Nikki, I really want to thank you for coming on the show today and sharing with us and encouraging us to to really take professionalism seriously and to lean into the things that we can do to make the care better. Listeners can't tell that, but she's just been mauled by her dog? No, I'm kidding. He's ready for some attention. But Nikki, you know, just making sure that we have that fire underneath us, to make sure that we're doing better and we're looking out for better for our businesses and our clients. For those who want to learn more, get connected, learn more about the guild and everything that you all are doing, how best can they do that?
Speaker 1 58:39
They can go to pet professionalgill.com and then look at, look at
Nikki Tuge 58:45
the pet care offerings. And what was when we're building out more and more value to the membership, we recognize that we have to have value there for people to want to join. But I think our goals short term are to create tools that will help pet sitters, you know, bring in new clients, service them to minimum care. Look at their own service, non negotiables. We're putting on a whole stream of webinars that I'll give you an example. And we have a pet first aid certification program at diagnostics that we give, that we gave to PPG, that was written by the veterinarian and a couple of vet techs of the facility that we used to own. And and then we put 20 years of our knowledge behind it, because it doesn't just cover CPR and basic assessments. It covers about 30 of the typical ailments that we have experienced as pet care professionals, prolapsed eyes and choking, heatstroke stings, snake bites and how you deal with those because whether, whether we'd like to admit it or not, and I don't know if we've got time just to share our last story with you. Yeah, please do the success rate of CPR on people outside and a hospital environment is very, very low, and it's the same with pets. And I'll give you an example. About eight years ago, a girlfriend of mine who was a vet tech, married to a. Veterinarian. She had rescued a border Collin and was playing with this six month old puppy in their backyard. Backyard. They lived on a farm, and he suddenly collapsed. He had a heart attack. And Anne, who was the vet, and Bethany, the vet tech, they had a mobile veterinary surgery in their backyard, because it was a rural area, so they tended to service, you know, large animals, both of them jumped into action, and Guthrie died. And when we started doing research on this, we realized that in an event like that, the expectation don't expect too much of yourself, because the odds of saving the animal is minimal outside a medical environment. And that was a medical environment. They had all the equipment, everything, everything on site, including the expertise. So when we developed the pet first aid certification program, we said, well, we have to do CPR, and we have to do breaks and sprains and cuts and bleeding, but, but the odds are that most pet centers are probably never going to come across that, but they are going to come across prolapsed eyes, blocked, choking, stings, bites, heat stroke, heat exhaustion, maybe a break. You know, they're the types of things that they are going to come across. So that's they're the skills that they need, like, you know, significantly broken toenail, where you get loads and loads of bleeding, all this kind of stuff, right? So the pet first aid program that we developed covers all of that as well as the basics. And next week, I think week after, we're doing a one hour webinar where we're covering 10 of those key things, and it's like $10 to join it. So that's the kind of thing that we're now starting to provide because we want everybody being able to afford to access education where, because you can argue that, I mean, some of those things could save a life. Some of them can at least help the animal in terms of pain and discomfort, which is also a fundamental responsibility that we have as pet care providers. So that's the type of thing that we're now starting to roll out at PPG for pet care members. And we've now got a dog walking membership. We've got a pet sitter, a daycare facility, a groomer, so that we've sort of, we've taken that umbrella of pet care professional and broken it down into disciplines, because, you know, you know that dog walking companies have different to fulfill a different role. Some of them just walk dogs. They don't go into the client's home. They're not they're not responsible for the client's home. They have a dog for 20 minutes. So their level of knowledge, there are certain things that we all should know, but there are other things that a pet care pet center should know, that maybe a dog walker doesn't need to know, right, because they're not looking after the animal for a period of time. So we're starting now to build a lot of really good resources in the hope that we can attract more pet care professionals, because we want those pet care professionals to jump on board with our behavior professionals teams and be available to jump on those local networking groups to help build a collaboration so that pet owners have everything they need on hand in their local area, which is really important. Yeah, well,
Collin 1:03:08
and a side benefit of this, or primary benefit of that at all things, is that it also just increases our confidence as we're coming into a client's home. And when we're confident, we're asking better questions, we're paying more attention, and we're more at ease and can handle things as they come up, and it just completes that whole cycle of care a lot better than we are otherwise. Because if we're kind of just kind of shucking and jiving and winging it right, that doesn't provide the care that we hope that we are ultimately,
Nikki Tuge 1:03:36
yeah, I mean, I always said to myself when we opened our first pet business and we were educating other people so that they could open their business. I always said to myself, you know, accidents will happen, but I just don't believe there is ever a reason why we should lose a pet or do some or our actions cause a pet pain or discomfort. And you know, I mean, how many times do you know you read the dog walker lost the dog, and you just think, how? How did that happen? I mean, I've been doing this for 20 odd years. I've never lost a dog. I've never had a dog out of my control. I've never put an animal in a situation where they could jump. I mean, there's a pet boarding facility about four miles away from where I live, and it's on a main road, and the fence is three foot high, and when I drive past it, I have to look the other direction. I can't look at it. I just can't look at it, because I see these big like vimaranas, and then you think they could leap that bloody fence in two seconds?
Collin 1:04:35
Yeah, I'm having heart palpitations just thinking
Speaker 3 1:04:40
about and I love when we first moved I looked at husband and said, Oh, my
Nikki Tuge 1:04:43
God, I will be if I, if I took my dog there and I wouldn't drop them off, I would look at it and go, my god, yeah, there's no way I'm leaving my I mean, there's and the person there with a chocolate throwing balls for this vimarana. And you think, if that ball goes over the fence, I know what my dog would be doing. Doing. We'll be going over the fence after it
Collin 1:05:02
just be gone.
Nikki Tuge 1:05:05
Yeah, all the you know, there's a story years ago, and it's one of the reasons why we set up our pet first aid is because I read an article about a veterinary clinic that lost a boxer because a member it was boarding at the vet, and a member of staff took it outside and left it for 10 minutes and went back inside and went back inside and forgot it was outside. It was outside for like, 30 minutes in a concrete walled environment in Mississippi in August. And by the time somebody remembered the dog, it was dead. Wow. It was like, it was like, heat, you know, it was literally brick walls, tarmac.
Collin 1:05:38
It was an oven, is what that was Yeah, yeah. I mean
Nikki Tuge 1:05:42
that when we owned our boarding facility in Oxford, Mississippi, we had a summer protocol, and when we hit summer and the heat index map came out, yeah, well, our staff started to work at five in the morning to get dogs out for pee break, so that we could get them out at 930 for their first rom because we locked from 10 till five. We locked that facility down. No dogs were going outside. It was so hot, it was dangerous to be outside, and they would actually take them out on leash just for pee breaks and straight back in again, one at a time. They weren't even put into runs or, you know, and I know, and somebody might say, well, that's a bit that's a bit excessive. Well, maybe it is. But you know what, we're not killing dogs. We're not putting dogs into a situation where they're going to get heat stroke or heat exhaustion. And as long as we're transparent and owners know that during the day, when the heat index is reaches this we lock the door. We lock it down. No dogs are going out, you know? We're not doing it arbitrarily going, Oh, it's warm outside. Lock it down. We have a heat index we're looking at, you know, the heat and everything else, so that we understand how dangerous it is, yeah, well, and it's
Collin 1:06:48
that those, those what I'm going to say, just these simple things, these kind of, you know, non they're not hard to just go look when it's too hot. I'm just not going to, but too often, again, we get caught up with, well, I have to, I think I need to. The client wants me to. This is what everybody else does. So then I guess I just might as well go ahead and do this, instead of going, what do I think? And I think that's really just these, these, these personal convictions and Stan internal standards that we have to have and knowing and trusting that it's okay to lean on those and build on those. Because, yes, we will be turning people away. It will turn them off, and we have to go, that's okay, because then I know that I'm building a business that I can put my head to pillow at night and sleep soundly knowing I did everything that I could.
Nikki Tuge 1:07:31
Yeah, you know, on opposing thought, the lady that now looks after my animals, and even though, when I first hired her, she had, you know, no credentials, no training, etc. The reason that I move forwards with her was this, this is the reason alone I was sitting outside casually taught having very casual conversation, because I didn't want it to be too formal. I wanted her to feel comfortable to talk. And I said to her, you know, give me an example of a client that you lost and why? And she said to me, should I lost a client that I used to walk their dog because I told them one day, I went to the house one day, and I text them and said, I'm not walking the dog. It's way too hot outside. Should I went outside, put my palm on the floor, and they don't have a yard. There's no grass. It was literally going out. And she said, So I left a message that I literally just took the dog outside on a leash, let it pee and then put it back in the house. And they said that wasn't acceptable, because they'd scheduled a 30 minute dog walk. And she looked at me, and she said, I wasn't taking that dog outside for 10 minutes, let alone 30 minutes. Yeah, and I just and I smiled very gently, and I thought, This person has no qualifications, but you know what? They got a lot of bloody common sense, and that's a great start for building on right somebody that, because this is someone that cares about animals intrinsically, doesn't need to be told that you don't take an animal out in the midday sun, but it's 100 degrees,
Collin 1:08:50
yeah, and trusting in that? No, I think that's that. That's beautiful, Nikki, and I really appreciate again, you coming on, and I'll have links to the pet professional guild comm and your podcast too. It's always filled with a lot of information. I enjoy your information. I enjoy your chat and chuckles too. Those are very good and informative, so make sure there are links to that in the show notes and on the website for people to get connected to Nikki, this has just been an absolute pleasure. I'm so thankful for your time today. You're very welcome. It's been fun. It's a phrase and promise as old as the pet sitting and dog walking industry, I'll care for your pet as if it's my own. But I really appreciate how Nikki took this and then challenged us to stay true to that. It challenges a lot of the shortcuts that we really want to take or we have quietly accepted over the years. If it wouldn't be acceptable for my dog or my cat. It should never be acceptable for a client, no matter the schedule, the price point or pressure to say yes. I think this mindset really forces clarity when we think through to the logical conclusions of what it means for us. It really redefines. Combines those non negotiables around safety or documenting or enrichment or medical awareness and the training that we have, it also should really give us confidence to say no when a request would compromise an animal well being, or our morals around that when, when we operate from this true standard, not just fluff words or not just nice things to say to attract another client,
Collin 1:10:31
trust becomes automatic. Clients may not understand every protocol, but they feel that difference, and that is what builds a sustainable, ethical business in the long run, and a healthy, well respected industry.
Collin 1:10:52
We want to thank our sponsors today, time to pet and our amazing Patreon supporters, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll talk to you next year. You.
