Dog Walkers Not Wanted: Her Job Evaporated When People Stayed Home

By Alina Selyukh

Published April 23, 2020 at 12:02 PM EDT

Beverly Pickering goofs around with client Bella the husky. Pickering's dog walking and pet sitting business relies on people traveling. People aren't doing that much these days.

As a dog walker and pet sitter, Beverly Pickering relies on people not being home.

In fact, 70% of her business relies on people traveling. She's usually busiest during this time of the year — near Detroit, where she lives, lots of folks head out for spring break or to shake off their winter blues.

Instead, she's down to a few clients who are still paying her even though they don't need a dog walker. That, she says, is the thing that has kept her from panicking even as she's having flashbacks to the Great Recession, when she lost much of her retirement money.

"To go from working ... 16 hours a day to ... I worked two hours today. That's something I'm having a hard time adjusting to," Pickering says. "I'm trying to spend as much time outside as possible, because that's where I am all day normally ... spending time with these animals, who are so blissfully unaware of all of this. Everything that makes them happy still makes them happy."

In Pickering's garage, there's a stack of shingles she had bought to patch a little hole in her roof that occasionally leaks into a bucket underneath. But she had to cancel on the roofer — an unsuspecting victim of the travel decline.

"The shingles, trim, nails [are] just waiting for the day when they can come out of the dark and start their new life out in the sun ... just like us," Pickering says.