About us:
Hi, I'm Darlene Sawyer. My husband tom and I own Aunt Darlene's Pet Sitting & Dog Walking Service, LLC and Aunt Darlene's Bed & Bark-Fest Cage Free Dog Boarding in Central New Jersey. We've been in business since 2003 and pride ourselves in providing the best pet care in New Jersey.
Animals of all kinds have always been my passion. I was a Legal Secretary for about 18 years and desperately wanted to do something else with my life. I knew I wanted to work with animals, but I wasn't sure how, or where, and suddenly my friend Michelle stopped by for help staring her pet sitting business. We were partners before the end of the night and the next day we started putting out flyers everywhere we could.
After a few months Michelle graduated from College with a Master's Degree in finance and decided pet sitting wasn't for her. After working the business by myself for a couple of years I was so busy that my husband complained he never saw me anymore and said I should hire pet sitters to help out. After a bit of pressure I caved and hired a pet sitter. He was right. I needed help and wasn't thinking about growth. I was happy walking 8 to 12 dogs a day, but he saw the growth potential and joined the business as the website creator/marketer/computer tech and long story short we have 3 pet sitters/dog walkers and 3 dog boarding houses including our own, and we care for about 20 to 25 dogs per day, sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's about average.
I'm no longer able to walk dogs myself because there's so much paperwork, emails, phone calls, consultations, etc. to take care of that I no longer have time to walk dogs, or pet site myself. Tom cares for the boarding dogs while I take care of the administration of the business, and when I need my doggie fix I just go downstairs with Tom and the dogs for a while. It's the best of both worlds. I love owning my own business. Because we're so successful I can enjoy being a business owner. I know and feel very badly for other people who own businesses who are barely staying afloat, or who have already sunk. I am very fortunate to not only be able to do what I love for a living, I also am fortunate enough to make a good living at it in the current state of the economy.
|
Looking for:
We can walk, or pet sit for you if you live within 5 to 7 miles of Old Bridge, NJ, and we can board your dogs in one of our cage-free, in-home, non-smoking doggie guest homes.
|