crows to burnaby

Greg and I going out east for a few days over the holidays. But we stalled on booking our flights until early November, and then it suddenly dawned on us that we hadn't booked a place for our delightful dog to stay.

By that time, all the kennels we contacted were completely booked for the holidays, from Gibsons to Surrey to Aldergrove - one of them said they'd been overbooked since mid-August. We got put on multiple lengthy waitlists. All the dogsitters were booked. Our vet, who boards a few animals, was full up. Bringing him on a cross-country flight is not a fair or reasonable option. We thought we'd ask our usual dog-sitting friends to share looking after him while we're away, but they'll will mostly be out of town themselves. It was getting a little panicky, but as it turns out one good friend of ours will dogsit and water the plants and so on, and we'll have a dogwalker coming in on a few of the days.

It got us thinking, though. Vancouver's a big city, with a lot of dogs in it, and apparently not nearly enough boarding for everybody, at least at one time of the year. What if someone with even less notice than us has to make a trip in a hurry, a few days before Xmas? They wouldn't have a hope in hell.

Of course, dog kennels can't really exist in the urban environment - the noise would get them shut down in an instant. And dogsitting is not a lucrative business. There's a practical limit on how many dogs a single person can look after responsibly.

If you could come up with a service that would find dogsitters just over the peak period, you'd do alright. It's a tricky one, though. I thought about some kind of online dogshare matchup where people would offer to take in dogs, but on a trust level it'd never work. Proper dogsitters are insured and bonded, because no one wants to let random strangers into their homes, or take a chance on them stealing or losing their dog. You wouldn't hand your kid over to a strange sitter you found on the net - most people are like that about their dog, too.

Still, if you're the entrepreneurial type, think about it and maybe you'll see the angle I'm missing, and come up with something.

And then book us in for next year, would you?