Wakefield animal lover able to buy a house thanks to her pet waste business
Emma Garner, 45, has told how she was able to buy her £195,000 four-bed semi-detached house with the money she has earned scooping dog poo.
She started her pet waste and care business - The Dog Poo Professionals - in 2014 but took it on full-time in 2016 after deciding to leave 9 to 5 as a claims assessor, which she had worked for 11 years.
She said she’s now fully booked up having hundreds of customers from the West and South Yorkshire regions who she visits weekly - her prices start from £14 a week for one dog and £4 extra per dog.
Emma said: "Picking up poo has changed my life.
"It has given me a great work life balance and no stress which was something I was dreaming of when I was at my law job.
"It has also enabled me to buy a house and be financially free, which I never dreamed of.
"Luckily, I have scooped it all of my life owning dogs and horses so I was lucky I didn't have to get used to it.
Emma opened the business after she found her job overwhelmingly ‘stressful’.
Prior to her leaving she has revealed at the time she had already began to research starting her own scooping business and had a few customers that already visited in her spare time.
“I saw an article about a man in America that had a dog poo picking business and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.
"I put on add on Facebook and within ten minutes I had my first customer.
“The first job I did was a big one, the garden hadn’t been sorted in a long time.
"I did think to myself, 'God what have I gotten myself into', but it really wasn’t that bad once I got started.
"But after being reassured that her job at the law firm was safe, she received a phone call on her day off telling her that she was being made redundant.
However, Emma used her redundancy as an opportunity to pursue her dog poo picking business full time.
Emma says she works a third of the hours she used to but earns four times more money.
She said: "It has given me a great work life balance and no stress which wasn't the case with the law job."
Emma also wants to dispel the idea that her customers are lazy or bad pet owners, as many of them have complex needs.
She said: “It annoys me when people assume that my customers are just lazy.
"I visit people that are in wheelchairs, have terminally ill children, people who have a broken leg, visually impaired, pregnant, elderly people.
“Even surgeons and beauty therapists that want to keep their hands as clean as possible for work - it all boils down to your situation and your preferences.
"I have someone clean my car because I absolutely hate doing it.”
For more information and the source, visit: Wakefield animal lover able to buy a house - from picking up dog poo