Paws on the Go Case Study

The Challenge

Paws on the Go is a dog walking company based in Austin, Texas, with a team of 12 walkers serving over 280 recurring weekly clients across the metro area. Founded by Sara Jennings, the business grew quickly on word of mouth and glowing reviews. But behind the scenes, the operational side was barely holding together.

Every Sunday night, Sara sat down with a color-coded Google Sheet and screenshots of Google Maps to manually build the coming week’s routes. Each walker handled 8 to 12 visits per day, and every client had a specific pickup window: morning walks between 7 and 9 am, midday walks from 11 am to 1 pm, or afternoon walks from 3 to 5 pm. Sequencing those visits by geography and time window across 12 walkers was a puzzle that consumed more than two hours every week. And that was just the starting point.

Mid-week changes made things worse. A single cancellation or new signup meant Sara had to rework an entire walker’s route, a process that took 30 minutes or more. Walkers would text her mid-shift asking, “Where am I going next?” because the shared Google Sheet was nearly impossible to read on a phone screen. There was no centralized way for the team to follow a route, just a list of addresses and a lot of improvisation.

The consequences hit the business directly:

• Afternoon appointments suffered the most. Without proper sequencing, walkers were consistently arriving 10 to 15 minutes late, which frustrated pet parents who had built their schedules around reliable pickup times.
• Three clients canceled in a single month, all citing unreliable arrival times. In a business built on trust and routine, that kind of churn was a serious warning sign.
• Pet parents increasingly expected real-time updates (arrival notifications, photo proof of walks), features they were used to from platforms like Wag and Rover. Sara had no way to offer this without walkers manually texting each owner, which ate into their walk time.

The Solution

After losing those three clients in one month, Sara started researching route planning tools. She tried a couple of free options, but none could handle time windows across 12 walkers with recurring weekly schedules. That’s when she found Upper.

“I was skeptical at first because most of the route planning tools I’d seen were built for delivery trucks, not dog walkers,” Sara recalled. “But once I did the trial and saw how it handled time windows and multiple walkers, I knew this was what we needed. The learning curve was basically zero. I had routes built for my whole team within the first hour.”

From Sunday night spreadsheets to 20-minute planning sessions

The most immediate change was how Sara planned routes. Instead of stitching together screenshots and color-coded cells, she imported all 280 client addresses via CSV with their time windows and 30-minute service times already attached. Upper’s multi-driver optimization distributed clients across all 12 walkers based on geography and time constraints.

What used to take over two hours every Sunday night now takes about 20 minutes. Sara builds the week’s routes, reviews the assignments, and dispatches them to her team, all from one screen. “Sunday nights used to be the worst part of running this business,” she said. “Now I barely think about it.”

Tap-by-tap navigation that walkers actually follow

Before Upper, Sara’s walkers were working off a Google Sheet that wasn’t designed for mobile. Scrolling through rows of addresses, cross-referencing time slots, and figuring out what came next was a constant source of confusion and delays.

With Upper’s driver app, each walker opens their phone and sees the day’s route laid out stop by stop. They tap to navigate to the next client, mark the visit as complete, and move on. No guessing, no texting Sara to ask where they’re headed.

Arrival notifications and photo proof that pet parents love

Competing in Austin’s pet services market means going up against apps like Wag and Rover, where pet parents are accustomed to getting real-time updates. Sara knew she needed to match that experience without adding work for her walkers.

Upper’s customer notification feature sends an automatic text to pet parents when their walker completes the previous stop, a simple “Your walker is on the way!” message that sets expectations without any manual effort. On top of that, walkers capture a photo at each visit using Upper’s proof of delivery feature. Pet parents now receive a snapshot of their dog mid-walk, which has become one of the most talked-about perks of the service.

“The photos changed everything,” Sara explained. “Clients share them on social media, they send them to their friends, and two of our newest signups told us they chose us specifically because a friend showed them the walk photos. It became a marketing tool we didn’t even plan for.”

Handling cancellations and new signups without the chaos

Mid-week schedule changes used to derail Sara’s carefully planned routes. A single cancellation meant pulling up the spreadsheet, figuring out which walker was affected, reworking their sequence, and hoping the update reached them before their shift started.

With Upper, Sara removes the canceled stop, hits re-optimize, and the walker’s route adjusts in under two minutes. New client signups work the same way. Add the address with the time window, and Upper slots them into the most efficient position on the nearest walker’s route.

The Impact

Upper transformed Paws on the Go from a business struggling with logistics into one that treats operational efficiency as a competitive advantage. The shift was immediate: in the first full month on Upper, Sara recorded zero late-arrival complaints, a problem that had been costing her clients just weeks earlier.

The 35% reduction in drive time between clients meant walkers spent more of their shift with dogs and less time in traffic. That efficiency gain was significant enough that Sara added 40 new clients over the following three months without hiring a single additional walker. The same team, running smarter routes, absorbed the growth.

Beyond the operational numbers, Upper changed how pet parents experienced the service. Automatic arrival notifications and walk photos created a level of transparency that pet owners in Austin weren’t getting from independent dog walkers. Client retention improved measurably, and referrals picked up. Several new clients signed up after seeing walk photos shared on social media by existing customers.

Performance Metrics

For Sara, the biggest win wasn’t any single metric — it was getting her Sunday nights back and knowing her team could handle growth without the logistics falling apart.

“We’re a dog walking company, not a logistics company,” Sara said. “Upper lets us focus on the dogs and the clients instead of staring at spreadsheets. That’s what our business needed.”