In human years, Woodrow is a teenager, so it follows that his love was fairly short-sighted. After an intoxicating start, she began showing up late for dates. Then she took a trip to Greece. Upon return, she began standing him up entirely. The last straw came when Woodrow saw his sweetheart breezily riding her bike—with another dog trotting alongside.
Woodrow looked heartbroken (although he always does).
Dog walking—the old-fashioned, analog kind—is an imperfect business. Finding and vetting a good walker involves confusing and conflicting web research, from Yelp to Craigslist. And there’s no reliable way to tell how good or bad a walking service is. Coming home to find the dog alive and the house unsoiled is pretty much the only criteria for success, unless one snoops via camera or neighbor.
Recognizing room for improvement, a pack of start-ups are trying to swipe the leash from your neighbor’s kid. At least four companies flush with venture cash are crowding into the local dog-walking game, each an erstwhile Uber for the four-legged set. Woodrow, like many a handsome young New Yorker, gamely agreed to a frenzy of online-dating to see which was best.
As the search algorithm is to Google and the zany photo filter is to Snapchat, the poop emoji is to the new wave of dog-walking companies. Strolling along with smartphones, they literally mark for you on a digital map where a pup paused, sniffed, and did some business, adding a new level of detail–perhaps too much detail–to the question of whether a walk was, ahem, productive.
This is the main selling point for Wag Labs, which operates in 12 major cities, and Swifto, which has been serving New York City since 2012. Both services track dogwalker travels with your pooch via GPS, so clients can watch their pet’s route in real-time on dedicated apps. This solves the nagging question in dog-walking: whether and to what extent did the trip actually happen.
After taking Woodrow for a spin, both services posted report cards with route maps, time, distance, a little write-up, and a photo of the dog. With his ears hanging limp, a dopey, tongue-wagging grin, and glassy eyes, Woodrow looked like a blissed-out hippy.
Next, we tried DogVacay and Rover, the other two startups in the walking wars. These services aren’t nearly as slick with their status reports, but they are far bigger and better funded. Together, they have raised $138.5 million from some of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture capitalists. In scheduling a walk, both platforms populate maps with nearby walkers, each of which offers a price they set themselves. This is a full-on Uber-like embrace of the gig economy. While Swifto and other regional services hire walkers and require them to commit to a minimum number of walks, DogVacay and Rover are geared for dog-lovers who want to make a few extra dollars on a Monday afternoon.
“The value proposition is: sign up for free, make money watching puppies,” says DogVacay founder Aaron Hirschhorn. Finding labor hasn’t been a challenge for either company.
Both companies go to great lengths to screen potential walkers, each claiming to accept fewer than one in five. Those who get bad ratings are kicked off and the best walkers are bubbled up to the top of search results by algorithm.