London's number one dog-walking agency

Kate MacDougall is a stumbling twentysomething, dissatisfied with what she sees in her career path--temp to administrative assistant, and then what? Whatever it is, it isn't the future she wants. Luckily, she happens to meet someone who's walking a dog "as a favor to a friend," and inspiration strikes. So, with the support of her partner Finlay, she starts a dog walking agency. With each section organized around one particular dog with meaning to her life at that point in time, MacDougall takes her readers along as she starts with her very first client, shows how her business grows, suffers through the great recession, and then becomes a thriving business. Meditations on life and the phases of adulthood mingle with amusing or meaningful anecdotes, and readers will be delighted by the eccentric cast of owners, like those of sweet Labrador Winston, who is not allowed near a puddle (even in the rain) and competing dog walkers like stern German Agnes, who refuses to walk dachshunds. This entertaining and lighthearted look at the life of a woman who took control of her own future is a perfect nonfiction crossover for fans of British chick lit like that of Sophie Kinsella.

A British freelance journalist's story about starting a dog-walking business that took her out of a post-college rut and into the contentment of a settled life. MacDougall was a bored sales assistant at Sotheby's when she asked herself two significant questions: "Is this it?...This is adulthood?" After accidentally destroying clay pigeons awaiting valuation, she decided to take a chance on another career: dog-walking. People who knew about her plans to start her own dog-walking service--including her mother, who believed all the author needed was a husband--raised their eyebrows. Yet MacDougall forged ahead, thrilled to work with creatures who reveled in their "perfectly uncomplicated" lives. What she had yet to learn was that the dogs she loved were attached to owners, each with their own neuroses. Some dogs required "a full bath and a blow dry after every walk," and one owner asked the author to use a Baby Björn to take the dog to the park. One client gave MacDougall a "bullet-pointed list" of what her "strict Hindu," Italian-bred cocker spaniel could and couldn't do, including eat beef. As the author's small business grew, so did she. She married her boyfriend and taught him to like dogs, survived a global recession and employed other dog-walkers, and got pregnant and learned about motherhood, which "leaves you like a half-open wound, vulnerable and exposed, your nerves eviscerated, your heart on the butcher's block." Then, without regret, MacDougall turned over her business to someone else and went to live in the country, "knee-deep" in children, dogs, and the simple pleasures of family life. With gentle humor, this charming coming-of-age story captures the ups and downs of a young woman defining a life on her own terms. The narrative also celebrates dogs as the delightful garnish on the "huge, messy…stew" of urban life. Warmly uplifting and wise. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.