A Dog Walker’s Life: Inside a growing service industry
“The thing you have to look out for when you’re walking dogs is … there’s just garbage all over the place,” says Jen Bernstein, one of the dog walkers employed by ProspectBArk!, a pet-care service spawned nine years ago in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens. “Chicken bones, broken glass, you gotta watch out for that so they don’t hurt themselves.”
To the many people who tell Bernstein her job must be easy, she says, “What are you, nuts?”
Regardless of occupational hazards — bites, bruises, falls on ice — and other challenges, Bernstein and her colleagues have prospered. Founded by Chun-Soon Li, a 43-year-old single mom from South Korea, ProspectBArk! has a five-star Yelp! rating, with more than 100 reviews, and now touts about 2,000 clients across outposts in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Jersey City.