We're not neighbors anymore in America, certainly not in the sense we used to be neighbors in this country.
When I was a boy, we had a strong middle class, a luxurious lifestyle, solid economy, plenty of leisure time, and children, unaccompanied by nannies or parents, ruled the open spaces of the neighborhood. People who lived next door rarely rang the bell to come in. There was a knock, followed by "Hello?" We were neighbors, and there was time to be neighborly.
In that mythical time, when I was a tiny human (in the 50's and 60's) if my family left town, which we did each summer, a neighbor would watch our house, walk our dog, get the paper, turn lights on and off discreetly.
My dad, also, had university students who would house-sit, as well, and they would walk the family dog, feed the fish, and, in my peculiar case, put maggots in the lizard cage as well dig worms in the backyard and feed them on a stick to the alligator. (Herman lived in the Museum of Science in Boston until he was close to thirty-seven years old! I gave up the pet alligator when I was thirteen.) I can still picture that poor Divinity School student, struggling as he was with all the ideas challenging his faith and testing his morality, digging in the dawn in his professor's back yard for long worms to gather in a jar and feed to an alligator as part of his kiss-ass for credits regimen. That was yesterday's dog walker.
Today, Studio City, unlike the Cambridge of my youth, is buzzing with working people who have less -- often little -- down time for kicking back, mowing the lawn, caring for kids, walking the dog. Leisure time is down. Working hours are up. As the economy slinks, the need for hard-working moms and dads to work longer and commute longer distances has increased. Less time for family and leisure time means less time for neighbors to walk our pets. They're also busy.
Lots of moderately successful people bought houses in the 80's and early 90's in Studio City. As things got tighter and investments proved weaker wellsprings of lasting support, they took on additional work to supplement their retirement. Or they simply reversed a phasing-out of employment plan, and began to return to offices for consulting or acting or participating in things they would have otherwise surrendered. And so, the place they picked for schools and comfortable pace began to get squeezed by pressures the whole world felt.
What is bad for the goose is good for the dog walker. There are a plethora of dog walkers and dog-walking companies in Studio City today, ranging from the big franchise businesses, like Fetch, associated with PetCo, to little one-actor-with-down-time-and-rent-to-pay independent operators. Some businesses are licensed, some are bonded businesses, some carry other features like grooming, pet-sitting, house-sitting, etc. There is a range of businesses, offering a range of services and a range of breadth of services. All of this can be confusing. How do you choose?
I'll create a chart in the next week, which will show the different types of dog-walking businesses and their plusses and minuses. Yes, there are some advantages to using a family-owned, independent business as well as the obvious bundled and price advantage of using a corporate cluster product, like those offered by Fetch/Petco.
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