Around 6 p.m. Tuesday, on the grassy patch next to San Francisco’s Ferry Building, Anik Kazi, a personal trainer from SoMa, flashed a smile at a woman he’d never met. “Do you travel much?” he asked. “Do you take many walks?”
Vicky Bhundhumani, founder of Hunky House, a dog training company, lit up. She loves traveling, she said, and hopes to visit Japan soon. “That’s amazing,” Kazi replied, before being cut off by the sound of clapping: “Time to switch partners!”
Kazi bid Bhundhumani goodbye and moved on to the next participant, with his 4-year-old corgi Loki, named for a favorite Marvel villain, trotting alongside. Kazi repeated his go-to questions.
If you think this sounds like a meet-cute, think again — unless you’re talking about meeting cute dogs. This was a doggie speed-dating event organized by the peer-to-peer dog-sitting service Pawrents, which seeks to disrupt the kennel industry by linking up pet owners with reliable caregivers.
San Francisco is home to around 150,000 dogs, according to 2022 figures from Animal Care and Control, which relies on estimates from the American Veterinary Medical Association. Around 22% of San Francisco voters are dog owners, whereas 17% have kids, according to a survey conducted by The Standard. The city is home to luxurious pet pampering parlors, doggy diners, and never-ending dog-park drama.
But where it falls short for some pet parents is overnight care. For years, Wag Hotels, a pet boarding company, and Rover, a pet-sitting and dog-walking app, were the go-to options for people leaving town and leaving behind their pets. But these options can be hard on the wallet — $70 to $170 a night, plus tax. Meanwhile, recent controversies over the quality of care of some of these options — Wag Hotel, for example, is being sued, with owners alleging animal neglect and even death — have left some dog owners hunting for alternatives. Enter Pawrents, which launched a year ago and has grown into a 1,600-strong Facebook group, with around 700 paid members within the wider Bay Area.
Bao Mei, 32, Pawrents’ founder — or “principal pup pamperer,” according to her email signature — dreamed up the service to solve her own dilemma. In 2022, while working as a product manager at Commonwealth Bank, she relocated to South Beach with Donut, her goldendoodle. She was shocked by what she considered the high cost of pet sitters and also by the conditions she saw in pet hotels. “He’s my baby,” she said. “I could never leave Donut in a dog hotel, with metal bars.”
Chats with people she met at dog parks confirmed that she wasn’t alone in her frustration. Mei started small, hosting Yappy Hour events in apartment buildings and doggy yoga at Alamo Square. The response was positive, leading to a soft launch of Pawrents through a Facebook group. In May, she was accepted to the Berkeley Skydeck program, a three-month startup accelerator, and quit her job to focus full-time on Pawrents.
“It was all AI startups,” she said of the incubator. She received some angel funding but was forced to bootstrap the majority of Pawrents, she said. Long term, her goal is to make money via partnerships with dog-friendly brands and businesses.
Pawrents members — who must have a work-from-home or hybrid work schedule — pay an annual fee starting at $79, which covers a background check and LinkedIn verification. Mei said several people have been cut during the vetting process — some failed the criminal background check; others misrepresented their dogs’ behavior or needs. “It’s OK if your dog has specific requirements, but you have to be honest and disclose it,” Mei said. “This is for the safety of everyone.”
Pawrents does not offer insurance in case of bites or other problems, and members must sign a liability waiver. The system is simple: A night hosting another dog earns you a credit, which equals one night of care for your own pet. If you’ve got travel or an event coming up, you can proactively host to build credits. The top-tier package, at $99, allows members to join with five credits already banked.
Vivian Chin of Oakland turned to Pawrents after being “deeply scarred” by an experience with a pet sitter she hired through an app. While traveling in January on the East Coast, Chin was told by the sitter that Zoe, her 14-year-old shih tzu, had caught a stomach bug and was vomiting nonstop. Chin anxiously texted for updates, but after a few messages, the sitter went silent. “I thought about flying back,” Chin said. When she collected Zoe six days later, the dog was bedraggled and coughing up blood. The vet bills were “huge,” Chin recalled, and the incident soured her on using paid pet-sitting services.
Chin discovered Pawrents through Instagram and attended a park meetup, where she and Zoe connected with another mom and dog. After a hike with the dogs and a home visit, Chin was reassured enough to let Zoe stay with the other Pawrents member. “I checked in a lot,” she said. “Safety and trust were the most important things.”
Over the past few months, Amy Vu’s dogs — Murphy, a pitbull-chihuahua mix, and Willow, a German shepherd-beagle mix — have spent a collective 40 nights with other Pawrents members, boarded separately. “They’re rescues, so they can be a lot,” said the multimedia manager at Corus International, an international development NGO, who lives in the Inner Sunset. “Murphy’s a very good girl, but she gets separation anxiety. This is a huge money saver and gives me peace of mind.”
Lisa Donahue, 37, director of mission success at Planet Labs, a satellite imaging startup, has enjoyed the Pawrents events she’s attended with her 11-month-old goldendoodle, Newton. She has hosted around five dogs since she joined in June and thinks of it more as playing host to an out-of-town friend than boarding a stranger’s dog. “We’re already doing all the things for one dog,” she said. “It’s fun to play with new ones.”
The speed-dating pet parents at Tuesday’s meetup started heading home by 7 p.m. Kazi had exchanged numbers with a few people and tentatively planned some walks. While he didn’t solve his December dog-sitting dilemma — too many people will be traveling that month — he’s optimistic about his next trip. “It’s really important to me that Loki is taken care of, and this could be the answer,” he said, before loading the corgi into the doggy trailer hitched to his bike and pedaling off.
