684: What AI Can't Replace in Pet Care
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How should we think about AI in a business built on trust, presence, and hands-on care? In this episode, we unpack a market study on theoretical AI capability versus actual AI usage and explore what it means for pet care professionals. We talk about why pet care remains a deeply human service, even as AI becomes more useful for admin work, marketing, communication, and strategy. We also discuss where AI can strengthen a pet care business and where it introduces risk if we rely on it too heavily. Above all, we argue that the future belongs to pet care businesses that use AI to sharpen operations while making their human value even clearer.
Main topics:
AI adoption across industries
Why pet care resists
Admin work versus fieldwork
Human trust and judgment
Using AI strategically well
Main takeaway: Artificial Intelligence may not walk the dog, but it will absolutely change how our businesses are run.
AI is not replacing the human being who walks into a home, reads the room, notices what is off, and cares for a living animal with judgment and presence. But it is changing the business side of pet care fast, from communication to marketing to operations. The challenge for pet care professionals is not whether we will use these tools, but whether we will use them in a way that strengthens our professionalism without stripping away the humanity that makes our work valuable. The businesses that learn that balance well will be the ones that stand out.
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The research article: https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
AI capability, AI usage, pet care, AI impact, industry adoption, AI chatbot, market study, AI exposure, low AI exposure, physical presence, situational awareness, administrative tasks, client communication, marketing copy, professional services.
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin Funkhouser
Meghan 00:01
We recently came across a chart showing theoretical AI capability versus actual AI usage across industries, and there were some very interesting points that came up. Even in industries where AI could theoretically do a lot, adoption is still far behind potential. There's also a very large gap between what AI could do and what people are actually doing with it right now, and that gap has significant implications for service industries like pet care.
This chart was produced by anthropic, and they are a company that makes Claude, which is an AI chatbot, and LLM, and they actually did a market impact study of AI to determine what kind of jobs and what industries could potentially be impacted by AI versus and compare this against the industries that are actively using it and are currently being impacted by it. You'll see a link in the show notes to go read this entire article. I really encourage you to do that to see their methodology and how it's put together. This chart itself is a giant circle. So for those of you who can't look at this right now, I'll do my best to explain this, but basically it's a giant circle, and all along the circumference of it are the names of different kinds of industries, so like management and protective services and sales and legal. And then within that, they have these dots that show how much of that market could be consumed by AI. So the closer a.is to the outer edge of the circle, that means that that could take up more of that industry. Then they have within that red dots, and that's their predicted or their understanding of the current impacts. So a lot of the red dots are clustered very close to the center of the circle, because AI is not currently impacting a lot of industries. And then we can compare where theoretically the impacts could be versus what currently is right now, and think through some of the things that this could impact. So we're
Meghan 01:59
going to break down exactly why this is helpful for our industry. But first Hi, I'm Megan. I'm Collin. We are the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. We thank you for joining us today on this different kind of topic that we're talking about. We would also like to thank our sponsors, pet sitters, associates and pet perennials and our Patreon people. Since April is pet first aid Awareness Month, it's a great time to get pet first aid and CPR certified. If you aren't already, you can get 5% off when you use the code prepare at Pet first aid for you.com. That's pet first aid and the number four and the letter u.com, that code expires April 30, 2026 so get on the ball. So let's talk about this AI graph. It shows two clusters of industries. The first one is those with high AI exposure. And this is again, theoretical, those are business and finance, computer and math, legal, arts and media, education and management. So these fields involve information analysis, writing and digital tasks. And if you've been involved in AI at all, you know that these industries and these tasks are exactly what AI was built for. Then the other cluster of industries are the low AI exposure. So this is construction, installation and repair, agriculture, grounds maintenance, personal care and food service. So farmers are safe. Home construction, people are safe. Think more of your manual labor jobs that AI can't touch. Yeah, these industries
Collin Funkhouser 03:17
require a physical presence and a real world environment and judgment calls right in the moment. And pet care clearly falls into this second category. I mean, we walk dogs, we are feeding pets, administering medication, observing behavior. All of this requires that we have a physical interaction and something that we harp on a lot about not just to our employees, but to other people as well, having situational awareness that kind of thing can't be digitized. To be able to be in the moment and know exactly
Meghan 03:50
what's going on. And when we think of what AI cannot touch in the pet care space, we are thinking about the actual field visits, the walking the dogs, the cat sitting, the actual care, but we think about all the admin stuff, you know, the route planning, the SOP writing, the email scheduling, we can have ai do some of that, but as far as the actual brass tacks of our industry goes, AI is not going to touch that. This can seem pretty obvious, but pet care is very hard for AI to handle. AR performs best when tasks are digital, repeatable, structured and information based. Again, those SOPs, the writing that it can do pet care, obviously, is the exact opposite. While we AI can inform us and help us make decisions for our business, it can't actually scoop the litter box.
Collin Funkhouser 04:38
We've already talked about this for a couple of different reasons, but there's that fizz. There's that physical presence again. Remember, a dog can't be walked by chat GPT, that takes us being there in the moment. And I know there are people who are concerned about robots possibly doing this, but we all know that it's so much more than just being an anchor at the end of a leash. Certainly, I've. Certainly had dog walks where it's felt like that's all I need to be I just need to hold on for dear life. We work with those clients and get them connected with a trainer and work on leash manners and all that stuff. But that requires judgment. We have to be able to look and observe. Is the dog overheating? Is there broken glass nearby? Is another dog approaching? How is it approaching? What do I do? And those, those are real, and those are contextual calls and judgment calls that we have to make, which requires this awareness of not just the environment, but also emotionally as well. Animals respond, we all know this to our body language, our tone of voice, our calm presence. We say it all the time before you come into the visit, take that big, deep breath and exhale, and probably do that five, 610, times to let go all the stuff that you just encountered. These are cues that communicate to the pets. And that is something that we miss. A lot about is that we communicate subconsciously or unconsciously, way more than when we are actually thinking about sit, stay, go, let go, come here, fetch all that stuff that is a conscious communication. The everything else involved is the subconscious or the unintentional body language and cues that we give to pets and how they observe and react to us, that is truly something that no robot or AI can replace. AI would also
Meghan 06:31
have no idea how to handle unpredictable environments. We always tell our team we have no idea what we're going to see and encounter on the other side of that door, we can prepare the best we can, but there are going to be unusual circumstances that occur every house, every yard or leash and pet behave differently. Even the most sophisticated robots in the world still fail at basic environmental navigation every single house, as we know, every house is different. You can only standardize so much. People move their furniture around, even if you say, Okay, this is the exact layout of the house. Well, maybe they've done renovations, maybe they've moved the couch. It's going to be different. So at least for the immediate future, and probably beyond, pet care is going to remain stubbornly human. There has to be a human walking into the house. So we know that AI is not going to replace dog walkers, but it will affect the pet care space. It will reshape the business layer around pet care. Specifically, we saw this a few years ago when chatgpt came online for the first time, and blogs were almost non existent anymore. They could be written by AI and we wouldn't have to spend hours working on them anymore. AI can handle that administrative work, the client communication, drafts and the visit summaries and report cards, the scheduling support, the marketing copy. You don't know what to say on the homepage of your website. Well, ask a robot, and they can tell you. Now we do have to make the caveat here of you still need to make it in your own voice. And you can train a chat robot to have your voice your company robot. You can feed it all your document documents, but at the end of the day, it still needs to have a human touch. Because if you've been around AI long enough, you know the nuances of what it says, the words and the sentences that it crafts, how normal humans don't talk like that. We don't say that kind of phrasing. We don't have when we type something out. We don't have the dashes or the brackets in there. So as much as AI is trying to replace humans, we need to make it sound as human as possible when we are trying to connect with our clients, because at some point they are going to recognize, oh, this is AI slop. I don't want anything to do with this company, not because I'm not on board with AI, but just because they're just bland, they're gonna sound like everybody else. There's nothing unique or different about them. I think the biggest way that AI can help our businesses is by reducing the time that it takes to do things, the administrative tasks we no longer have to sit with a blank page of how do I write an SOP? Well, we can go and have a conversation with Claude about the best way to implement this in our business, and how we can go about writing it. We aren't saying that everything that AI produces is going to be gospel, and you need to go forth with that, but you can have it as a starting ground, and it is going to save you time, whether it's data analysis or training materials for your employees, this is especially true for client communication. When you go to message somebody, make sure that it is with your own voice. So maybe you start off writing a draft, and then you ask, AI, how can I make this better? How can I make this more compassionate, or please, make this softer so the client understands what I'm saying. As a pet sitter, you know how much trust goes into caring for someone's furry family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pet sitters Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs or just starting out, they make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today at pets@llc.com as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care.
Collin Funkhouser 10:00
Sure AI is also a marketing and visibility powerhouse. It really helps lower the barrier to us when we work to make our websites. Yeah, it used to take you understanding HTML and all sorts of things, and you can use Squarespace and plug and play and drag and drop website creation tools. However, to get more power out of this, you can have aI help code these things for you, or, like Megan mentioned earlier, anything with writing, with ad copy, with getting these things on your website to be found by SEO, and helping with that content. Again, not just having AI generate the blog for you, or all these things you have to have that human interaction is more and more. That's what these are looking for. The search engines they're looking for human content. That is the limiting factor. It's not just words on a page anymore. It has to have that flavor to it. And then we really enjoy having AI help us with brand messaging, where we are trying to understand, how do I communicate my business to other people? Here's how I want to set this up. Here's who I think my target client is. Here's how we want to be perceived. Let's go back through and workshop with some language in order to make sure that we are connecting with the right people. And it's that back and forth. It's that ideation and creation where it really helps. It gives you a sounding board to go back and forth with. Here, as competition gets louder and more and more people enter the industry, even when the service quality is the same, we have to stand out. This is where it gives more. Using AI allows businesses to compete against larger and larger businesses, solo operators with no marketing budget, you can now produce content that looks and sounds professional. This helps level the playing field and commoditizes this resource. It also, it also raises the floor for everybody, though, because now there are higher expectations things should and come across a little bit more polished and a little more direct and understandable and connecting with the clients, because everybody has access to these resources. And to make this even more powerful, have a local SEO expert work with you with your content that you're creating. We don't have to bypass the humans in any of this stuff. Let's say that you are looking for a new marketing campaign and trying to develop new ad copy, and you need images to go along with that rough something up in AI. And then go to a content creator, go to an artist, and say, Help me get something like this. And then work with them. I know with for me, I am not an artist. I struggle to put into words exactly what I'm looking for and exactly how I want things to line out and what I want. I tend to be better at saying about things that I don't like versus what I do, which is not helpful when you're going to somebody and asking them to make an image for you or a logo, so roughing something out, having the back and forth angry messages with AI, and then going to the human and saying, Now I want you to make this and polish this and make this something worthwhile and really professional.
Meghan 13:09
I'm glad you pointed out that we don't have to bypass the humans, because I think that is definitely a fear that people have with AI of we're just we're going to be a robot society, and the only ones that are going to be left standing are the ones that can fight the robots off and claim victory. But no, it doesn't have to be that way. You can still use marketers and SEO experts and admins and lawyers and consultants, because AI can give you advice, but it is ultimately not a lawyer. It can gather a bunch of information and data together, but is it going to stand up in a court of law, probably not. But what can
Collin Funkhouser 13:43
be helpful is if you do need, if you get something that has legalese written on it, go with AI and have it help explain it to you, and then go to a lawyer, and it can help equip you with some understanding, some baseline knowledge, some verbs and words that you can use to now have a conversation, to put you further along in that process. I mean, what would you rather do? Would you rather be paying a lawyer 250 bucks an hour to have them explain terms to you, or would you rather do that for free, with AI, then go into a lawyer's office and be that much further along so that you can resolve it quicker and have a better understanding and a better grasp of what the problem actually is. Again, everything from helping you with pricing strategy or service packages or your marketing funnels or your operations, it helps you get a starting point, and then from there, you can move forward. That really is an equalizer when it comes to
Meghan 14:38
small businesses. We see it all the time in Facebook group, Should I raise my prices? What is a good price? How do I know if to grandfather in or not? Well, ask chat that question because a lot of times other sitters are across the country or have no idea where you're located or your business structure. But if you can train AI on this, you can ask it the tough questions in your business.
Collin Funkhouser 14:59
Do. Depending on how much data you want to give, AI, export all of your monthly statements from last year from your bank, from your business account, which you obviously have, feed all of that into a chat bot, chat GPT or Claude or whatever, and then start asking questions about the financial health of your business. How resilient Are you? What kind of strategies should you implement? And go from there and then, yes, now go talk to a CPA, go talk to somebody and say, here is what I think I am. Here's all that same information that I just gave my chat bot, and have a conversation with them and how it actually can be implemented, but it can help speed up a lot of that process, and we don't have to feel so clueless a lot of the time, or feel like we have to wait to get some answers. You can speed that up a little bit, but always be cautious with this. Always understand that at some point there are limitations, and go talk to a professional, especially around finances or business or lawyers. Go talk to somebody about that.
Meghan 15:59
I hate to sound so simple about it, but it really is having a best friend who has all of the knowledge in the world and you're just having a conversation with them.
Collin Funkhouser 16:07
Yeah. Now with that, there are some venture backed platforms and upcoming software packages and technologies that are deploying AI at scale, and they're using this for things like matching and scheduling or pricing optimization on the fly and even handling customer service. So now this is really taking AI and making it the forefront of their business operations. We're no longer just competing with other sitters down the street, and we don't truly believe in competition. We believe in collaboration. However, now we are having to compete with companies that have engineering teams, and we have people who are deploying AI to make their business operate and function at a very, very high level. The competitive landscape is shifting, and the businesses at risk are the ones that look most like a commodity, the ones that are competing on lower levels and don't really have differentiation.
Meghan 17:07
If that's the case for your business, you may need to start thinking about your business as more of a luxury service. We talked all about this on episode 680 which is the reason clients choose you, and it's not your features. So you may want to go listen to that one. We do have a warning, though, for the pet care industry. Even though AI cannot replace pet sitters and dog walkers, it can still expose weaknesses in certain businesses, businesses most at risk are competing primarily on price. Again, that commodity, we do not want to be in that business, competing on that those pet sitting and dog walking businesses that have simple, undifferentiated services. Do you offer something that nobody else in your city or in the country is doing well? You need to be leaning into that, or offer it in
Collin Funkhouser 17:53
a way, or have customer service that is outstanding, or a booking process that is really simple and easy. What is different about your business than everybody else, because if we find ourselves competing on price and convenience alone, AI will expose those weaknesses in our business. We're finding that AI powered platforms and automation can compress margins in exactly all of these areas. Businesses that are harder to automate often emphasize things like long term client relationships. We talk about that one a lot. We all want those kind of relationships. However, is our business set up to nurture them, or are we just hoping that people will stick around with us because they kind of maybe sort of like us, or we were convenient that one time? Where is that strength in your business also things like professionalism and accountability. Do you have ways of RE DO clients have recourse in your business if something goes wrong? We often don't think about that, but Megan and I had a very experience when we were looking at operations in our business, and we were looking at things like software and HR and accounting and all these things. And one of the things that we really wanted was, Who do I go to if there's a problem, how do I set up a red flag or send up for help, and who's gonna be the fastest to respond? That is a critical aspect, especially as of a business that involves people and trust at its core. If our clients don't feel like they're being seen or heard, or have a way to complain, that loses a lot of trust and really damages that relationship well, and
Meghan 19:24
they're just going to do it on the Google review. Yeah, you don't get in front of that. They're just going to leave a bad Facebook or Google or Yelp review and get out their frustrations that way. It's not saying that we can get ahead of that all the time, but if we can try to prevent leaks from getting out into the public and our reputation being at stake, we would like to do that well, because
Collin Funkhouser 19:42
when we are dealing with high needs animals or safety situations with different kinds of behavior with pets, that is trust that cannot be replicated, that cannot be compressed by AI, there's no way of getting around that. When we look to say, hey, you cannot automate. You can. Not artificially intelligent, chilly way, trust and safety with high needs animals. That's not something that you can do. So when we look to our business, well, maybe that's a place where we can niche into we can explore how we get connected with more of those kind of clients as another Bulwark and wall against the undifferentiated nature of other
Meghan 20:23
businesses, but AI can help us in those areas of the special needs pets. They can inform choices that we need to make, or inform clients on what choices they need
Collin Funkhouser 20:33
to make. Yeah, absolutely. If you have seen your pets, if you have reactive dogs or medical needs and you're needing help understanding what's going on or maybe brainstorming ideas for how to set up a care routine, lean into AI for that, and then take that to the client and present them what you've come up with, what a wonderful way to now speed up or make even more personalized recommendations to clients, obviously making sure that we have the training resources, knowledge and know how to now implement that and execute it well, and know everybody's on the same page, but you can start there, and then you, as the professional, go and implement that plan.
Meghan 21:13
Ai, does not eliminate service businesses. Yes, can it deliver your groceries and take you from point A to point B in a Waymo, yes, it can, but it really is going to separate commodity providers from trusted professionals. Is not going to be able to scoop the litter, yes, with are there litter robots out there? Yes. Are they pretty terrible most of the time?
Collin Funkhouser 21:34
Also, yes, yeah. What can't those robots do, repair themselves and force cycle themselves and reset when they run into an issue. We know a lot of providers right now are actually running their visit reports and photos through AI to help generate them faster and help have a standardized tone for all of their employees. And so it's kind of worth asking at this point, does that matter for clients? If a client sees a report and sees that is obviously written by AI, or if they have five different employees that are serving them, and all of the reports sound exactly the same, will that trigger any red flags in their minds? Will that make it feel impersonal? Does it matter to them? We have to be intelligent about using artificial intelligence, we have to be careful about that. One of the things that separates our businesses from, really, any other industry is the personalization of what we do and the connection that clients have to their provider, your team or you. We cannot lose that and so be we have to, I think my personal opinion on this is that we have to be careful about standardizing visit reports and things like that through an AI chat bot, just for the sake of expediting the process and making sure that we're not having spelling errors or any of these things, or that we everybody writes it in the same way that loses the personality, that connection, that story. I now I really like seeing spelling errors and mistakes, because I know a person wrote that, and I guess until the AI robots include those intentionally to throw us off, then I don't know where I'm going to stand, but it allows that humanization of I let a human into my my my home to care for my pet. They love my pet. That's something else we have to focus on here. If humans love the pets, they have that relationship, and we can never
Meghan 23:30
lose that throughout this conversation, we keep talking about how AI is fast and efficient, and it's going to be quick and do it super lightning speed. But we need to remember that that doesn't negate that a human still needs to touch it on the other end, we still need to be basically checking the checker, fact checking, if you will. Just because it does something faster doesn't mean that the quality is always going to be there again. Is it going to capitalize the name dude, when that's just a regular word that people use, but we know that it's the name of the animal we're taking care of is dude. So is it going to do that for us? Well?
Collin Funkhouser 24:09
And one thing that people will use AI for are written summaries of a lot of information. So maybe you do a meet and greet and you record all the information, or maybe you take a bunch of notes during a meet and greet and you throw them into AI and you say, go ahead and summarize this for me the danger here comes in is that AI doesn't have the context of the visit, the home, the person or the pet or your professional experience and understanding of what's going on. And so you can throw those notes into AI, and then if you just take those and copy and paste them into a profile and then move on without reviewing them. I mean, it's a simple mistake, but I have seen it time and time again when we have tried that, because I've tried to go, Hey, can I format this? Can I make this all standardized? If I just give it a bunch of blob of text, can it output? Do a certain output for me? And one of the things that I see gets messed up all the time is the difference between a cup and a scoop, which is so funny, because that was one of the things that we talked about, almost from the very. Beginning of the podcast of understanding and asking those kind of clarifying questions in our notes, and still, AI is like, Oh, you need to give one scoop. I'm like, no. It said one cup. Or it said one cup, nope, this is one scoop. That kind of thing introduces, actually, a level of liability to us, where, if AI obscures some observation right because completeness is not the same as accurate. That may have information there, but is it accurately portrayed in the right order for the right reasons, there are real professional and legal risks that we have to acknowledge when implementing this, especially if we're not double checking if we're not reviewing and using our judgment to refine this.
Meghan 25:46
It's that nuance there that is likely going to be missed if we don't double check it. And now a word from our friends at Pet perennials. If you've been in pet care long enough, you know this truth, the way you show up during the hard moments is what clients remember the most. Pet perennials helps pet businesses do exactly that. They create beautiful sympathy and milestone gifts for pet parents, and their gift perks program makes it easy to send those gifts directly to your clients. No inventory, no packing boxes, no run to the post office. You simply choose the gift and pet perineals takes care of the rest. They also include a handwritten card and gift wrap at no additional cost. It's a thoughtful way to support grieving clients while also building the kind of long term loyalty that great pet care businesses are built on. Learn more at open a free gift perks account at Pet perennials.com this AI chart and full report reinforce something essential about pet care. The real value professionals provide is not information, it is trust and presence, something that we all know, right? We give peace of mind. There's not really an AI out there that can do that. Clients are not buying a checklist of tasks completed. They're buying peace of mind while they're away. They're providing sound judgment. Your years of experience and trainings and certifications in unexpected situations. We know how to handle these things. We know how to handle emergencies, and we have a backup plan, and we have these situations outlined. We know if this happens, then we do this, we have that safety and calm for their animal. We don't just care about our safety or the client's home. We care about the pet itself. We are reliable and consistent, not just on day one or day five, but through the years. We are consistently able to care we are consistently there for their pets. Then there's that emotional connection that AI can't replace. AI is not that great at being an emotional friend, right? Someone who actually knows their pet inside and out? We do, yeah, all those things
Collin Funkhouser 27:35
when we think about what does the client Why does the client want me in their home? Many times, you're right, Megan, we I know I can tend to feel like I'm just here to check boxes and move on here. I just have a set of tasks that I have to do, and I've got to get out of here, and they just can't do those tasks, so they needed to hire somebody to be here. But when we think about that peace of mind, judgment, reliability, safety and calm, and that emotional connection that truly elevates what we do to a whole other level. And we've experienced this whenever we've been taking care of somebody's cat, and they've got an automatic feeder, a fountain with a filter, and it's a big fountain, and they've got the automatic litter, Genie and robot thing that's cycling everything. And they've got even sometimes, toys that automate and go off at certain levels. And they still want us over there. Why that's really important for us to sit and connect with and understand. Why do I need to be here? Or maybe they've got a dog door and they've got an automatic feeder and a fountain and a little thing that will shoot the tennis balls out at random intervals in the backyard. Why do they need you there? That is what we have to lean into. Those are things that can never be automated and will never happen when we think about it, pet care is actually much closer to things like nursing or child care elder care than anything related to software or accounting or management. Our industry relies on that human judgment in unpredictable and high stakes environments, the AI
Meghan 29:03
is not going to know what to do when the dog is laying on the floor having a seizure. We will. We are trained in that we know exactly how to step in. Yeah, absolutely. We're going
Collin Funkhouser 29:13
to know how to double check medications. We're going to know to look for side effects. We're going to know to do the safety checks in certain situations, and think ahead, according to the weather and the routine that's coming up and how we need to have things positioned and reach out to the client and have a care team surrounded by us. When we think about what it means to be a professional in an AI world, we we've got to dig into that that is something that every single one of us has to face and understand is, why are you here? Why are you getting paid money? You as the professional, you're going to remember things like those dog quirks without being reminded. Right? You're going to notice something is off even before the client does because you're a professional and. You're paying attention
Meghan 30:00
to these things now, sure, yes, can AI through a pet tag alert the client if something is wrong or their temperature is elevated, or they have had more or less activity that day? Yes, there are use cases for AI in a pet's life, but putting the peanut butter on a lick mat and setting it down for the dog, or taking it on an adventure hike or doing a pet taxi is not something that is going to be feasible for AI Well, or at least
Collin Funkhouser 30:24
be able to. We have, we are able to give the context of that, what was going on in those moments of high activity, what was the temperature like? How has the dog been acting before, during and afterwards? How was the rest and recovery like? We can give that kind of thing. And ultimately, all of this is built towards building a relationship for the long term, not automating interactions away. When it comes to understanding what we bring to the table and what makes us truly professional and truly valuable to a client, it is that trust and that relationship that we're after when we have things go wrong. How do we handle and respond to that when we have things go right? Do we communicate that we actually did that, and it's the care, and it's kind of interesting we think about at the end of the day. We do this because we care and we love for pets and people. How does that show up in our work, and where do we express that, through our SOPs, our policies, our training, our background checks, all of that stuff. But what does the client actually experience with us in our business that makes them truly see us for what we are? Because if we reduce ourselves to tasks and to checklists and boxes and just going through the motions, that is the stuff of AI and can be automated away very quickly. The true value, I firmly believe, is the eyes, the ears, the emotional connection that we bring to the table that clients want their pets to have an experience. It's the safety that we bring knowing that we are professional and the client can sleep easily on their vacation knowing there's somebody in that home that knows pet first aid in the CPR, if something goes wrong, there's somebody in that home who has an emergency protocol if the house is on fire, and will take care of it. That is the real power
Meghan 32:17
of what we do. The future is not about AI replacing pet sitters and dog walkers. The real question is simpler and more urgent. Will you use the tools available to become more organized, more efficient, more professional, so your clients see even more clearly why you are irreplaceable? How are you going to make that connection with them, that emotional appeal of I am the best and you will have the most peace of mind when I'm on the clock for you. Artificial Intelligence may not walk the dog, but it will absolutely change who runs the most successful pet care companies. We have to get on board with this. We had a round table last week on episode 683 with some awesome powerhouses who talked all about AI and the pet care industry. The fact is, it's not going away, so we need to use it in our businesses and have it sharpen everything we do, and then show up with everything that AI cannot provide. Thank you for listening today. We appreciate you. We'd also like to thank our sponsors, pet sitters, associates and pet perennials. We hope you have a great week. We will talk with you next time bye, you.
