How to choose a dog walker without regretting it

You are about to hand a stranger the key to your home and the lead of your dog. It is one of the biggest trust decisions taken in everyday life, and it is nearly always taken in a hurry, looking at four photos and a price. This article is about taking it better.

Price is the worst way to choose

Not because cheap is bad, but because in this market the price says very little. A walker with ten years of experience and one who started last month can charge the same on the same street. What does correlate with quality is something far more boring: how many questions they ask you before accepting the job.

Someone who asks about your dog's reactivity, whether it pulls on the lead, whether it is scared of motorbikes, what it eats and when, and what exactly you do in a lift with another dog inside, is someone who has had problems before and learned from them. Someone who only confirms the schedule and the price has not.

The meet-and-greet is the real test

Any serious platform offers a free first appointment in your home. It costs nothing, commits you to nothing, and it is where everything is decided. Watch three things:

How they come in. A good professional does not lunge at the dog. They come in, greet you, deliberately ignore the animal for the first few minutes and let the dog be the one to approach. Anyone who goes straight for the head of a dog they have never met is telling you they do not read canine body language.

What they do with the lead. Ask them to do a short loop with you present. Watch whether they keep a little slack in the lead or hang off the animal, whether they stop when the dog wants to sniff, and how they manage passing another dog.

What they ask about things going wrong. "What do I do if he slips the collar?" "Which vet do I go to?" "Does anyone else have a key?" A professional asks about the bad scenarios. It is uncomfortable, and it is exactly what you want to hear.

The questions almost nobody asks

• Will my dog go out alone or in a group? And if in a group, how many dogs and of what sizes? A reactive dog must not go in a group under any circumstances, and that distinction is explained in detail on the dog walking service page.
• How many jobs do you chain before mine? If your walk is the sixth of the day and the previous neighbourhood is twenty minutes away, your hour is going to become forty minutes.
• What do you do when it rains? The right answer is not "we cancel" — it is "we shorten it and dry the dog off afterwards".
• Do you carry public liability insurance? It is not mandatory for them, but carrying it says a lot about how seriously they take the trade.
• Are you registered as self-employed? If they provide services regularly, Spanish law requires it. Working off the books does not make someone a bad carer, but it does leave you with nothing to hold on to if something goes wrong.

The red flags

There are five that in my experience predict trouble almost every time:

1. They accept your dog without asking anything. Especially after you have told them it pulls or reacts.
2. They promise training results. A walker walks. If they sell you that within two weeks your dog will stop pulling, they either do not know what they are saying or they are selling you a different service.
3. They push to be paid outside the platform. Besides breaking the terms, it leaves you with no time log, no report and no procedure if there is an incident.
4. They dodge the meet-and-greet. It is free and takes twenty minutes. Whoever avoids it is avoiding being seen at work.
5. They speak badly of all their previous clients. You will be the next one.

How you check it is going well

A well-run service leaves a trail: the route, the duration, whether the dog did its business, and a photo. That is not decoration — it is how you spot early that something is changing: a walk that systematically lasts forty minutes instead of sixty, or a route that shrinks a little every week.

And then there is the signal no app can show: how your dog receives that person the fourth time. An animal that gets up and heads for the door wagging when it hears the key has filed the only report that truly matters.

When to cut it off

Sometimes it does not work, and it helps to know in advance what justifies ending the relationship without agonising over it. Three reasons are enough: the dog showing evident fear of that person after several weeks; the reports not matching what you see — an animal that comes home without having drunk, or that is not tired after a supposed hour of exercise; and anything happening that they did not tell you about and you learned some other way.

None of the three requires a difficult conversation. You cancel the routine, recover the keys and look for someone else. What you should not do is put up with it for six months because switching feels like effort: the one who pays for that is the animal, and it cannot tell you.

Continuity is worth more than anything else

Once you find someone who works, keep them. Having the same person every time is worth more than any feature, any discount and any certificate: the animal recognises them, they know its quirks, and they will notice before you do that it is limping or eating less.

That is why real availability matters so much when choosing. In big cities like Madrid there is enormous supply but also a lot of churn; in others like Bilbao, where the neighbourhoods work at village scale, it is easier to find someone who has spent years in the same area. Ask how long they have worked your neighbourhood before almost anything else.