Dog Walkers in Palma, Spain

Palma lives two cities a year. From November to April it is a mid-sized Mediterranean capital, quiet, with ideal walking weather and the best months of the year for any dog. From May to October it fills up, the seafront becomes impassable through the middle of the day and the beach access rules tighten. Any care plan that fails to distinguish between those two seasons falls short within months.

The city holds one rare advantage: the Bosc de Bellver. A pine wood of more than a hundred hectares around the castle, inside the urban boundary, with shaded earth paths and several degrees less than the asphalt below. From Santa Catalina or El Terreno you walk up, and that turns a dense, heavily built district into a perfectly liveable place with an animal.

On the sea frontage, the Portixol–Es Molinar–Ciutat Jardí axis forms a continuous waterside promenade that is the city's most used route at first light. To the north, Pere Garau and Son Rapinya have less green and more density, and that is where demand for professional walking concentrates.

The make-up of the population adds a particularity. Palma has a very large international community and many residents who spend stretches of the year away, which drives demand towards boarding and in-home care rather than the simple daily walk. It also means sitters who work in several languages hold a real advantage here.

In winter, finally, the island offers something the mainland cannot at that distance: twenty minutes by car takes you from a city-centre flat to the Serra de Tramuntana, with open mountain trails and comfortable temperatures while half of Europe sits below zero.