Today we’d like to introduce you to Dusan Obsajsnik.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My partner/wife and I had been dating for a while and we both had dogs. Our favorite thing to do together was to take our pups (Shelby Rose and Tobey) for epic hikes. When covid hit, we had a sweet baby girl come into our lives in Aug of 2020. We were both looking for a career change and we decided to do something together. We talked about it a lot and couldn’t land on anything that felt sustainable and exciting. Eventually we asked ourselves, “what do we love to do? We should do that!” We realized that hiking with dogs was our happy place and we could share that fun that we always had and provide a great service for our furry friends too.
I started taking dog training classes and became a certified dog trainer. It took about 1 year of book stuff and about 8 months of hands on training to get my certificate. We started out walking dogs in town and giving out business cards at all the dog parks
My partner, Rebeccah, has since graduated from an intense grooming program and become a dog groomer. She works for one of the best groomers in Portland. Down the road, we would like to add that to our PDX Paws services.
We started out hiking with 4-5 dogs a day three days a week around spring of ‘2022. We now cap the van capacity at 13 and are now hiking 5 days a week.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When we first started, we were just on the tail end of the pandemic. We had a brand new baby and a new direction we were moving towards. We were really struggling and had to scrape by to make rent every month. We even had to hit up our parents to help us in these new challenges that lay ahead. They believed in us and knew that we were trying to build something wonderful.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I run a day camp for dogs that takes packs of dogs for hikes in the woods. I’ve described it as an enriching outdoor dog daycare, as we do all our adventures outside in nature! The dogs get to play and sniff and jump on logs, and we help to facilitate that. Wer’e pretty known in our area now for doing the pack hikes.
How do you define success?
Paying bills
Able to spend time with our kids (Ruby and DJ)
Love my job
Hike with dogs every day
Pricing:
- $50 for a pack adventure
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Pdx-paws.com
- Instagram: PDX_paws
- Facebook: PDx_paws
