Nature tails - dog walking

11/08/2026

🐾 WE’RE LOOKING FOR TWO VERY SPECIAL PEOPLE TO JOIN NATURE TAILS! 🐾

We’re starting to plan the next chapter of our Home Boarding service and are looking for potentially two self-employed people to join Nature Tails, with the aim of starting properly in early 2027.

Before we explain the opportunities, we wanted to explain a little about why we’re making this change.

As most of you know, Ben & Megan are getting married later this year and, after the wedding and honeymoon, we’re looking forward to starting the next chapter of our lives together.

We have plans to renovate our home and hopefully start a family, and after a lot of thought we’ve decided that the time is right for us to eventually step away from having boarding dogs within our own home.

Home Boarding has become a huge part of Nature Tails and something we’ve absolutely loved providing, but it also means our home is effectively part of the business 365 days a year. As we move into this next stage of our lives, we’d like to create a little more separation between our home and work while still making sure our clients have access to the service they’ve come to rely on.

So we’re not getting rid of Home Boarding or stepping away from our clients.

Instead, we want to find the right people to help us take this side of Nature Tails into its next chapter. 💙

There are two different opportunities we’re exploring 👇

🏠 HOME BOARDING

Providing our existing Nature Tails clients with the same home-from-home boarding experience we currently offer, with dogs staying in your home while their owners are away.

For this role, you would need to live in the Kilmarnock area, have a suitable home with a secure garden and be willing to obtain the appropriate Home Boarding Licence.

Don’t already have a licence? That’s absolutely fine!

We wouldn’t expect someone new to this to already have one. Nature Tails will help and support the successful person throughout the licensing process, using our own experience to help you get everything in place.

What matters initially is finding the right person and the right home – we can work through the licensing side together.

For Home Boarding, we’re initially looking for someone with no children, cats or resident dogs in the household.

However, we won’t automatically rule out an exceptional candidate. If someone completely blows us away and we genuinely believe they’re the right person for Nature Tails, we’re happy to look at their individual circumstances and whether we believe it could work safely.

🐶 IN-HOME PET SITTING

This would involve staying overnight in our clients’ homes and caring for their dogs while they’re away – potentially for several nights at a time.

This could be perfect for someone who absolutely loves dogs and would be a brilliant fit for Nature Tails but isn’t in a position to provide boarding from their own home.

It also allows our clients another option where their dog can remain in their own home, with their own bed, routine and familiar surroundings while their family is away. ❤️

Both opportunities would be self-employed roles with regular, consistent work throughout the year.

These aren’t intended to be occasional side jobs. We’re looking for people who want to make working with dogs through Nature Tails their main work and long-term commitment, with Nature Tails continuing to manage the bookings and provide the clients.

🐾 WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

Professional experience with dogs would be preferred, but it’s not essential for the right person.

We’re much more interested in your attitude towards dogs, reliability and whether we believe you’re someone we can trust to represent Nature Tails.

You must:

🚗 Hold a full UK driving licence.

🐕 Be genuinely confident handling dogs of all breeds, sizes and strengths – including larger, powerful breeds.

📅 Have good flexibility, including weekends and busy holiday periods.

🏡 For Pet Sitting, be comfortable staying overnight in clients’ homes for multiple nights when required.

❤️ Genuinely love working with dogs and share the same attitude towards their care that we do.

🤝 Be willing to provide references and complete any appropriate checks required as part of our selection process.

⏳ Be looking for something long-term. We’re looking for people who can become a genuine part of Nature Tails for years to come rather than something temporary.

🏖️ AND YES… YOU CAN STILL HAVE A LIFE!

Although this is regular, year-round work, we absolutely expect whoever joins us to take holidays and have time away.

In fact, that’s one of the main reasons we’re looking at bringing two people into this side of Nature Tails.

Having two trusted people gives us much more flexibility around holidays, busy periods and unexpected circumstances and means the entire service isn’t dependent on one person being available 365 days a year.

🚐 OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME MORE INVOLVED WITH NATURE TAILS

Although these positions are focused on Home Boarding and Pet Sitting, there could also be opportunities for the right people to become involved with the dog walking side of Nature Tails in the future.

This could apply to either role, but we think it could work particularly well alongside In-Home Pet Sitting, allowing someone to take on regular dog walking work during the day while caring for a client’s dog overnight.

There’s absolutely no requirement to progress into dog walking – but for someone who wants to make working with dogs a much bigger part of their life, there could be plenty of opportunity to grow alongside us. 🐾

❤️ A LITTLE REASSURANCE FOR OUR CURRENT CLIENTS…

This is a HUGE decision for us and absolutely not one we’re taking lightly.

We know how much trust it takes to leave your dog with someone while you go away, and we will not simply take on two people because we have positions to fill.

Whether we receive 5 applications or 100, we’re prepared to take as long as necessary to find people who genuinely embody the Nature Tails attitude towards dogs.

People who put the dogs first.

People who are patient, caring and treat every dog like part of their own family.

And people who understand the responsibility that comes with being trusted with someone else’s pride and joy.

Our biggest test will always be:

Would we happily leave Ralph & Lola with this person?

If the answer isn’t an immediate yes, they’re not the right person to represent Nature Tails.

Anyone we’re seriously considering won’t suddenly be handed dogs and left to get on with it either.

They’ll spend time shadowing Ben & Megan, getting to know our dogs, our clients, our routines and exactly how we do things.

We’ll have trial days and nights, introductions and plenty of time working alongside us before we’re comfortable with anyone operating independently.

📱 NATURE TAILS WILL STILL BE VERY MUCH INVOLVED

We’re changing where and who provides the overnight care – not removing ourselves from the service.

Nature Tails will continue to manage the bookings and remain involved with our clients.

Once a booking is confirmed, we’ll create a WhatsApp group between ourselves, the client and whoever is caring for their dog, meaning communication remains open throughout their stay.

We’re putting this advert out well in advance because we’re in absolutely no rush to fill these positions.

We’re looking towards early 2027, giving us plenty of time to find the right people, get to know them properly, complete trials and, where required, work through the Home Boarding licensing process.

Ultimately, we’re looking for two people we can trust, our clients can trust and, most importantly, the dogs can trust. 💙🐾

INTERESTED?

Send our page a private message telling us:

🐾 A little about yourself
🐾 Your experience with dogs
🐾 Whether you’re interested in Home Boarding, In-Home Pet Sitting or potentially both
🐾 Whether you’d be interested in dog walking opportunities in the future
🐾 Your current availability
🐾 And most importantly – why you think you’d be a good fit for Nature Tails

Full details of rates and how the self-employed arrangement will work will be discussed with suitable applicants.

Please share this post or tag someone who you think could be exactly who we’re looking for. 🐶💙

fans

10/08/2026

☀️ Warm Weather Update – Wednesday & Thursday ☀️

Apologies for leaving this update a little later than usual. When warm weather is expected, we normally like to post on a Sunday before the week begins. However, the forecast has been very up and down, with rain originally expected, but it’s now looking like Wednesday and Thursday will be dry and sunny.

Unfortunately, we’ve made the decision not to run any double or triple walks on Wednesday or Thursday. We will be offering single morning walks only, with pick-ups starting from 7am, to ensure we can safely accommodate everyone.

Anyone currently booked for an afternoon walk on Wednesday or Thursday will automatically be moved over to participate in the morning walk.

If this doesn’t suit and you would prefer to cancel the day completely, please let us know as soon as possible.

Should also say we have limited spaces left for Friday anyone wishing to swap days around! First come first served

Thank you for your understanding. As always, the safety and wellbeing of the dogs will come first 💙🐾

30/07/2026

🐾 Availability Tomorrow 🐾

Just a quick one for our existing clients or anyone thinking about trying us for the first time!

We have a few spaces available on both our morning and afternoon walks tomorrow across all of the areas we currently cover.

If you’d like to get your dog out with us, just drop us a message and we’ll see what we can do.

As always, spaces won’t last long! And will
Be first come first served until all spaces gone 🐶

fans

25/07/2026

🐾 Behind the Scenes at Nature Tails 🐾

Most of what you guys see on our page is the fun part — happy dogs running around the fields, playing with their friends and having the best time 😂

But we thought it would be nice to show you a little more of what happens behind the scenes to make all of that possible.

There is a lot more to Nature Tails than simply turning up, collecting the dogs and taking them for a walk. Every week involves a huge amount of planning, organising, cleaning and teamwork to make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible.

A big part of our weekends is spent getting organised for the week ahead.

We message clients to confirm which days their dogs need, add everyone into our weekly spreadsheets, organise the groups and plan the routes for all three vans.

We use quite a few spreadsheets to keep track of everything, including weekly bookings, payments, account balances and home boarding dates.

Our payment schedule helps us keep track of who has paid, who may have something outstanding and anyone who has credit sitting on their account. With so many dogs attending each week, having everything organised properly helps us make sure nothing is missed.

Our boarding calendar is another important one, especially as we are lucky enough to be pretty much fully booked throughout most of the year.

Alongside organising our existing clients, we are also regularly answering new enquiries through messages and phone calls, arranging meet-and-greets and trying our best to help as many new dogs as we safely can.

Now that Erin is driving independently, we are still helping organise her planner and schedule while she gets completely comfortable managing her own route.

She is doing brilliantly and has already made a massive difference to how smoothly our days run.

Once she is fully settled, we will gradually start giving her a little more responsibility for managing her own bookings and payments too.

She does not know how lucky she is 🤣🤣

The vans also get a full reset every week.

All of the dog bedding is emptied out and taken to the industrial washer and dryer before fresh, clean bedding is put back in ready for Monday morning.

The vans are taken to be washed externally, and because Ben’s van is fully waterproof, the full dog section can be washed out there too.

Megan and Erin’s vans are slightly different, which means they have the pleasure of cleaning the insides themselves.

One of the very few perks of being the boss 🤣

We also regularly check the cages, bedding, doors, escape hatches, fans and everything else the dogs use while travelling.

Our vans are a massive part of the service we provide, so keeping them clean, safe and comfortable for the dogs is always extremely important to us.

Home boarding is another huge part of Nature Tails that you may not always see much of on our page.

We are incredibly grateful that so many of you trust us to look after your dogs while you are on holiday, attending weddings, enjoying weekends away or simply needing somewhere safe and familiar for them to stay.

Home boarding is not just having an extra dog sleeping in the house though.

Every dog has their own routine, personality and individual needs.

There are feeding routines to follow, medication to give where required, walks to organise, bedding to wash and plenty of time spent helping dogs settle and feel comfortable.

Some dogs walk in like they own the place straight away, while others need a little more reassurance before they fully relax.

We always try our best to keep their routine as close to home as possible and make them feel like part of our family while they are staying with us.

It also means our home is shared with boarders throughout most of the year! If we aren’t on holiday we usually have at least two dogs staying with us.

There can regularly be boarders getting collected or dropped off on a Saturday or Sunday, so even when the walking side of Nature Tails has finished for the week, we usually have plenty happening at home.

It might mean our weekends look a little different to most people’s, but we are very proud to provide a service that so many of you rely on.

We also make sure Ralph and Lola still get their own time, attention and space around everything else, because they are a massive part of our lives and Nature Tails too 💙

Our dog room is cleaned every day and gets a full deep clean every week, along with all the usual washing, tidying and general chaos that comes with having lots of dogs coming and going 😂

Then Monday arrives and the three of us are straight back into another busy week.

Between us, we can now safely accommodate more than 70 dogs in a single day.

That involves organising collections across different areas, planning the groups, travelling between the secure fields and making sure every dog receives the service they are booked in for.

We work to a very tight schedule every day and always try our best to arrive when expected.

Of course, traffic and dogs do not always follow the spreadsheet as closely as we would like them to, but we normally manage to keep everything moving pretty well 🤣

Having Erin driving her own route has made a massive difference.

It has allowed us to spread the workload, make the days more manageable and offer availability in areas where we have not been able to advertise for a long time because we were always so full.

There are also loads of smaller jobs happening in the background every day.

Replying to messages, updating bookings, checking payments, arranging meet-and-greets, ordering supplies, maintaining equipment and preparing for things such as holidays, warm weather or changes to the normal schedule.

Our weekly hours are genuinely crazy regularly i’m 65+ hours each week and Megan covers roughly 40-50 while lucky Erin is on 4 hour days at the moment!🤣it is definitely a busy life, but we genuinely would not have it any other way.

We have built Nature Tails into something we are extremely proud of, and seeing the dogs excited to see us every morning makes all the organising, cleaning and spreadsheets worthwhile.

The field photos and videos may be the part you guys normally see, but behind every one of those days is a lot of preparation, teamwork and care.

We are incredibly grateful to everyone who continues to support us, recommend us and trust us with such an important member of your family.

Nature Tails is much more than simply taking dogs for a walk, and we are very proud of everything the three of us manage together 💙🐾

fans

22/07/2026

We’ve loved seeing these out and about already 💙🐾

The whole idea was something a bit different and we weren’t sure how well they would go down, but you guys have absolutely got behind them!

Thanks so much to everyone who has bought one so far , they look brilliant on the dogs and it’s great seeing a little bit more of the Nature Tails pack out on your own walks too 🥰

21/07/2026

Just sharing this post from last year and the reason why we take the heat so seriously!

Hey everyone ,

We just want to give everyone a little insight into why we take the heat so seriously, here’s a photo of the fan system in the back of the van where the dogs travel. At 11:45am today, with no dogs inside, the temperature was already sitting at 27°C, even with the fan going full blast at 100%.

Now, imagine adding in a van full of tired, panting, warm dogs after their walks… even for a short journey, it wouldn’t be fair or safe for them. That’s why we decided to finish up earlier today.

We started bright and early at 6:45am, and by 11:45am every dog was safely home before the heat really built up. It meant a bit of juggling and shuffling, but it was the right call to make sure the dogs were safe and comfortable.

We honestly can’t thank you enough for always being so understanding when we need to change things around for the weather. A special thank you as well to the clients who sacrificed their spots today so that those who really needed care and had no other options could get out — that kind of thoughtfulness is exactly what makes our Nature Tails family so special.

We know it’s not always easy when plans change last minute, but your support and trust means the world to us and it allows us to always put the dogs first ❤️🐾

Thank you again for being such a brilliant and considerate group of clients. We’re really lucky to have you all! 🐶✨

20/07/2026

🐾 DOG WALKING SPACES NOW AVAILABLE! 🐾

For a long time, we haven’t advertised in Bellfield, Riccarton, Shortlees or Caprington as our walks in these areas have always been full.

However, with new staff joining the Nature Tails team and a third van now on the road, we’re delighted to finally offer a limited number of spaces again! 💙

Our group walks include:

🐶 Small, carefully matched groups
🌳 Access to secure private field
🎾 Plenty of safe off-lead fun, exercise and socialisation
🚐 Collection and drop-off included

Spaces are limited, so please get in touch if you’d like more information or would like to book your dog in.

Feel free to share with any friends or family in these areas who may be looking for a reliable dog walker! 🐾

fans

12/07/2026

Wedding Chaperone Benji 💍🐾

On Friday we had the pleasure of taking Benji along to the Seamill to be part of his mum and dad’s big day, and he done amazing from start to finish 💙

He was so good for all of the photos and looked very smart in his wee tux too. It was lovely to see how much it meant to his owners having him there with them on such a special day.

After he done so well with all of his wedding duties, we finished off his afternoon with a splash at the beach which he absolutely loved 🌊🎾

We also received the loveliest message afterwards from Benji’s owners and messages like that really do mean a lot to us. We are so grateful to be trusted with moments like this and to be able to play a small part in such special days.

A huge congratulations again to the newlyweds and thank you so much for letting us bring your boy along to be part of it all 🤍

Well done Benji, you smashed it 👏🐶

12/07/2026

☀️ Warm Weather Service Update ☀️

Due to the temperatures forecast this week, we will be reducing our services to one early morning walk each day.

We will begin collections from around 7am, with the aim of having all dogs safely home again by approximately 11am, before the temperatures become too high.

Thankfully, with Erin now driving her own route, we are in a position to safely accommodate everyone who would still like their dog to join the early morning walk.

Anyone currently booked in for a triple time walk will automatically be moved onto the early morning service unless you let us know otherwise.

Anyone booked in for a normal walk will also automatically be moved onto the early morning walk. However, please let us know as soon as possible if you would prefer to cancel, as this will help us organise our numbers, collection times and routes for each day.

We already know that the majority of clients who normally choose not to use the early morning service will likely make the same decision this week. We will be in touch with those clients to confirm, but if you do not hear from us and think we may have missed you, please just send us a message.

We will be keeping a particularly close eye on Thursday and Friday, as the overnight temperatures may remain high and there is a chance that even the early morning conditions could become unsuitable.

We completely understand how much many of you rely on our services, and reducing the week is never a decision we take lightly. However, we will never take unnecessary risks with the dogs in our care, especially when they are exercising, travelling in the vans and spending time outdoors.

Thank you, as always, for your understanding and for working with us to keep everyone safe. 🐾