by Gina Cariño
Home >> Walking Miss Luna: Interview with an Aspiring Dogwalker
GC: What’s going on in the picture?
AL: I’m waiting with my flower girl to get married. We’re in the Science Museum in Richmond, Virginia, where my husband and I had our ceremony and reception. I was a bit nervous, but having Luna around calmed me down and gave me an excuse to not talk to all of the guests who were starting to arrive.
GC: Tell us about your Great Dane.
AL: We got Luna when she was 8 weeks old. She was so tiny then. She only weighed 12 pounds and could fit on my lap. Now she’s 6 years old and weighs 130 lbs. She can look intimidating to some, but she’s really a sweet and fun dog.
GC: Is she smart?
AL: Yes. She was staying at my mom’s house once and was told to sleep in the hallway. After whining a little and being told to stay, she poked her head through the semi-closed bedroom door and dragged her giant bed through the much smaller doorframe and into their bedroom.
GC: Describe a day in the life of Luna.
AL: After a walk in the morning, she sleeps all day. She’ll get up to move into the sun shining through a window or to follow us into another room. She really wants to be around people.
GC: Where does she get to walk?
AL: When we lived in Manhattan, that meant walking all over town, mostly on hard sidewalk pavement, or taking her to the Madison Square Park dog run, which is a small fenced-in area in which dogs can run around off leash. It smelled great. Two and a half years ago we moved to Brooklyn and we specifically found a house from which we could quickly walk to Prospect Park, a 500+ acre park designed by the same landscape architects who designed Central Park.
GC: And what’s that like?
AL: Every day from 9pm to 9am dogs are allowed off leash in the park, meaning that if you get to the park around 8am, your dog has an hour to run around freely in the longest meadow in any U.S. park. The first time we took Luna to Prospect Park, she couldn’t believe it! She kept running and looking back at us in wonder. Maybe I’m projecting a little, but she definitely loves going to the park.
GC: Does she have friends in the park?
AL: She loves to hang out with other dogs. She meets new dogs every time we go there, but she knows certain dogs really well. Her best friend is a small white bulldog named Oates. They can play for hours, both of them lying on their backs and mouthing each other. They are quite the odd couple, but they don’t seem to care.
GC: Do you make friends in the park?
AL: It’s almost embarrassing, but Luna introduced me to our closest friends in Brooklyn. They are the owners of her best friend Oates. Though hundreds of people take their dog to the park, you tend to see the same people and can guess whether they’d be fun to talk to. If it turns out they aren’t, you can just keep on walking your dog!
GC: How has motherhood affected your dogwalking?
AL: I used to walk Luna myself for 1-2 hours in the morning, rain or shine, and even if I was tired or sick. Since I’ve had a child it’s harder for me to get to the park by 8am, so most days Luna is picked up around 7:30 by Eva’s, a playgroup service that takes Luna to the park with about 15 other dogs. Luna gets back around 10:30. We usually take her on a second, quick walk at the end of the day, but sometimes we get lazy and just let her out into the backyard.
GC: If you could, would you work as a dogwalker?
AL: I’d love to. It could be quite profitable. Dogwalkers make $20 per hour per dog and some dogs don’t even walk very fast.
GC: Are dogs allowed in the New York subway?
AL: You can take your dog on the subway if he or she can fit into a bag. That’s not an option for me.
Do you have a question for Amanda? Or a greeting for Luna? Post it right here below.
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Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2008-04-24 09:00:00 +0200
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Didn’t Luna get jealous when your child was born? sometimes, dogs feel aparted when a baby arrives at home
Hi Gina&Amanda,
I had a bulldog English called Buyo, he died this January… I always love dogs, but know I’m at a phase where I don’t want to have a new dog. It was a very sad situation…
Amanda, how do you overcome the death of a dog?
Bye,
Leticia.
Why is Luna called Luna?
Hello from Boston. $20/hour – that sounds like a great job!! Congrats on your wedding looks like it was lots of fun and eclectic!
Great interview. amanda you sound terrific, I mean having Luna at the wedding is wonderful. That was a good question about whether or not Luna got jealos when your baby arrived.
My daughter lives in Brooklyn and she has a jack russell named Ginger.
Best wishes to you,
Peter
Luckily Luna didn’t get jealous when the baby arrived—she’s a very mellow dog and seemed to know that our daughter was the new member of the family. Sometimes when the baby was crying in the other room, Luna would get up from her bed to stand by the door, look at the door, then look at us, as if to say, “come on, get her!” We also made sure to do what the experts recommended regarding introducing our baby to the dog, ie, give the dog something of the baby’s to smell first, continue to give her affection, etc.
Leticia, I’m so sorry about your loss. It’s so sad when our dogs die. I don’t personally know how to handle losing a dog because my other dog died when I was so young. I know it’s a really difficult thing to get through, though, because our dogs are members of our family. My friend Matthew’s golden retriever Charlie died last year, and it took him a long time to mourn him. But it has been almost a year and now he has a great new friend named Lucy—another golden retriever!
During our 3 hour drive to the breeder’s house, my husband and I went through all the names we could think of and nothing seemed to fit. We knew we wanted a 2 syllable name ending in vowels. We also wanted a “dog” name, one not usually assigned to humans. Finally I opened the map and started reading names of different places around the country … Luna is a county in New Mexico! When we brought Luna home we decided that the name works because she has a white spot on her chest, like the moon.
Interesting interview! I’m quite surprised of the prices for a dogwalker!! 20 dollars x 15 dogs x 20 days (suppossing just monday to friday), that is 6000 dollars/month!!!!!!!
I like dogs very much, I think they give you plenty love and company. But I have a question: for a big dog, how do you manage in a small flat ? I think it’s better more space for them.
regards,
Begoña.
What a funny wedding. I think Luna could cause some embarrassing or unforgettable moment. Could you relate us some of these moments?
Best regards,
Miguel Ángel
Hi Amanda,
I’m not kidding if I tell you that reading this interview it has been the first time I have heard that dogwalking is a job. And, as I see, very well paid in some cases.
“There must be things of American people”, I thought. So, I googled “Paseador de perros” in the internet and after getting about 340.000 entries I realized that I’m not actually very knowledgeable in dogs.
I used to have a dog (Piqui) when I was a child. She had a tragic end
(I don’t want to remember it) and since then I didn’t want to become fond of any other animal. But, five years ago, one of my sons was given away a little russian hamster. He called her Speedy (yes, an English name). They normaly live just one year, but Speedy lived for almost three years. And then, tears again. I think that was the last time…
Just a few questions for you:
You say you’d like to be a dogwalker. Have you already applied for the job?
What do they ask you to be a dogwalker? Do you have to take a course or something like that?
I wonder how you pronounce Luna in English? Is it like in Spanish?
Regards from Madrid
Hi, Amanda and Gina,
Luna looks very paceful and loveable. It seems like to have a child, you have to go out with her, you have to take care about her. I don’t have any pet, but sometimes I think that they are the best friends: they don’t demand anything, and they are always there. And when I meet some kind of people, I think that the dogs are even better.
To be dogwalker seems very interesting: It is a business very profitable.
Amanda, congratulations for your child and for Luna.
Conchi Calvo
Hello everybody.
I think that dogwalkers are one of the consequences of our really sophisticated way of life. I love animals but I don’t want to have one at home because I don’t have enough time (and energy) to take care of one, but I can understand people who look for some loyal friend. I can understand too that sometimes people need a dogwalker in special situations, but I would like to told to people who need dogwalkers everyday that they can buy a dog with rechargeable battery instead of buying one alive. Oh, my God! I forgot about the “Tamagotchies”, but nowadays I,m sure it’s possible to find a tamagotchiwalker for less than 10$ an hour.
Best wishes,
Carlos
Begona, Great Danes are great apartment dogs. Once they get their exercise, they are happy to be very sedentary
- ie, not move around a lot -the rest of the day. They are very different from breeds of dogs that have a lot more energy, like Golden Retrievers or Labradors.We moved to Brooklyn from Manhattan in order to get more space for our growing family, so now we are lucky enough to have a little room!
Miguel Ángel, Luna was very well behaved throughout the wedding! My husband’s grandmother was supposed to sit in the front row, but she is afraid of dogs and insisted on sitting in the third row. The funniest part of the service for us was when Luna decided that she was bored of the ceremony. She gave a big groan like she wished she could be somewhere else and shifted from her seated position to lying on her side, with her legs out straight, her wreath of flowers crushed, and her face turned towards us as if to say, hurry up!
Juan Carlos, I was surprised to hear that there are dog walkers as well! Thankfully there are several good ones in my neighborhood. I haven’t tried to find work as a dog walker because my schedule doesn’t allow me to be available for clients, rain or shine, at this point.
All I would have to do to start working as a dog walker is to get my name out there and find some clients. The best way to do that would probably be to talk to people at the dog park and pass around a business card. There are no courses to take, though I think a good dog walker would learn as much as possible about dogs and safety.
Yes, we pronounce Luna in English like you do in Spanish.
Conchi and Carlos, Thanks for your comments. I agree. Dogs take a lot of commitment and energy, but they are really worth it. Luna is a part of our family and I can’t imagine not having her with us all the time!