MANATEE — Dressed in pink scrubs checkered with cartoon Scooby-Doos, Sharon Barnhill talks about her lifelong love of animals and how she has turned her passion into a growing business.
After working at a veterinarian’s office for years and oftentimes having to watch pets suffer, she decided she wanted a happier way to relate to the animals she adores.
She founded Happy Trails Pet Sitting in 2007 with 10-15 clients she developed from watching friends’ and associates’ pets part time. Two years later, her one-woman business is growing rapidly with the hiring of 10 pet sitters and expanding the business’ territory from east Manatee into all of Manatee and Sarasota counties.
Happy Trails offers services like dog walking and companionship to all sorts of animals from dogs and cats to horses, birds, chickens and once even wild baby foxes.
“I don’t think there is anything I wouldn’t do,” Barnhill said with a smile. “It used to be snakes but now I have people who will take care of them.”
Her clientele has grown to about 70 accounts and is growing as Barnhill hires more sitters. She provides them with advertising materials and a territory and encourages them to build their customer bases.
The pet sitters, who are all certified, insured and bonded, provide medications and food, clean up pet accidents in the home and take animals to the vet, along with other mundane tasks such as watering plants and taking in the mail.
Barnhill charges a flat fee of $20 for a half-hour daily visit no matter the number of pets.
Her revenue has doubled in her first two years, and she attributes some of the growth to the large magnetic signs advertising her business on the side of her expansive Dodge Ram truck.
“I’ll be in traffic and get a call on my cell from someone behind me wanting information about the business,” she laughed.
“Those red, white and blue magnets really stand out.”
She also relies on a lot of word-of-mouth advertising.
Linda Gringeri employs Barnhill to walk daily her three dogs — a Doberman, shepherd mix, Cocker Spaniel — each day while she’s at work at Blake Medical Center,
“She came over to meet the dog and they took to her right away,” Gringeri said. “She treats them like they were her own dogs. She gives me peace of mind knowing that my dogs are OK when I’m at work.”
Since she has started hiring sitters, Barnhill is finding it hard to let go of accounts. “I really get attached to these animals,” she said.
The recession hasn’t had much impact on her business, she says. “I did feel the gas increase but haven’t felt the recession much.” She finds that people will give up other luxuries to take care of their pets.
Barnhill, who owns seven rescue dogs, two horses she raised from babies and a cat who showed up at her door just before Christmas, only hires sitters who have had previous experience with other people’s animals.
“It is different when you show up at someone’s home and they’re not your dogs,” she said. “You have to know how to make a dog trust you, you have to think like a dog.”
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