I use commercial dog walkers, luckily I have a really good one. I also walk in areas where there are a lot of commercial dog walkers. Sometimes, I have trouble with CDWs. The most problematic thing is when a large 'pack' of dogs, approach me and my dog and sort of 'swam' over us. Even though my dog is generally confident, he is wary of upwards of 6 to 8 dogs all approaching him at once. And sometimes not all the dogs are pleasant and it's difficult for him to deal with this when there are so many dogs. There are local restrictions in place in some but not all areas where I live. The most important one to my mind is that a dog walker must have no more than 4 dogs with them. The rangers on the Common enforce this, they will walk over to dog walkers getting dogs out of vans to check how many dogs they have and the rangers are very visible around the Common generally. In other areas though, there are no restrictions - because of the problem I describe above, I no longer walk in these areas. My dog walker says that other dog walkers use these areas to take a very large number of dogs, and it's often the same people who will take any dog, and don't have standards in terms of dogs being adequately trained or good with other dogs etc. So I was interested to see that the Kennel Club will be publishing a code of practice for Commercial Dog Walkers in 2016 - and it looks like (from the questions) there will be the option for people sticking to this to say they have some sort of Kennel Club approval (not sure how that will work though). I thought it was interesting. The survey is here: http://www.thekennelclub.org.uk/press-releases/2016/january/dog-owners’-opinions-sought-to-help-shape-new-code-of-practice-for-commercial-dog-walkers/
I think it would be really interesting to see how it is enforced. My dog walker is registered with the council and they do spot checks for how many dogs she has in day care. They also check how many dogs her husband walks and he keeps records of this.
One of the questions (in the survey) is whether CDWs should display id - I suppose like taxi drivers do. I guess this might make it easier for people to report bad behaviour.
I do think dog walkers should carry identification on them and be "licenced" but that is only as good as any checks made on them. I also think they should be limited to the number of dogs that they can walk at any one time, we have local bye laws prominently displayed that you can only walk a maximum of 4 dogs although I'm not convinced that any dog walker, whether professional or not, can be fully in control of 4 dogs on lead at a time.
I always feel apprehensive when I see one dog walkers huge transit parked up, I never know how many dogs she's going to be walking, although her name is plastered all over the van so I guess it would be easy to report if there was a problem. However there is also a dog walker in my village who never takes more than 4 dogs and generally only has a couple, whose dogs are always so well-behaved I feel like asking her to take Ripple for a few days (months possibly? ).
