From sticky notes and paper calendars to Houndtrust: pet sitting software designed by an independent operator who still boards dogs today.
David Van Wagoner didn’t set out to build a pet sitting software. Instead, he set out to get some sleep.
For six years, he and his wife have boarded dogs out of their Salt Lake City home, eight or ten at a time, on any given night. The care itself never confused him. It was everything around it: a feeding note buried in an old text thread, a signed waiver he couldn’t locate, a payment he half remembered collecting through one of three different apps. He built the first version of Houndtrust for his own house, on a night when he was tired of hunting for information that should have already been in front of him.
That single fix grew into something bigger: pet sitting software built specifically for independent professionals, not marketplaces looking to keep them dependent.
In this conversation, David talks through the real financial gap between marketplace fees and independent ownership, the paperwork failure that shaped how Houndtrust handles emergencies, and why he thinks the future of this industry belongs to small operators who never stop running their own businesses on the tools they build.
Thank you for joining PETBIZS, David. You built Houndtrust, pet sitting software for independent professionals, straight out of a dog boarding business you and your wife still run today. Before we dive into that story, can you introduce yourself and tell our readers what led you to build software instead of simply running your own home boarding business?
I’m David Van Wagoner. My wife and I have boarded dogs in our Salt Lake City home for six years. Houndtrust started because the care worked, but the office side was scattered across group texts, sticky notes, a paper calendar, and several payment apps. By the time the dogs settled, I still had hours of follow-up waiting. I built the first version for our own house. When it gave us some breathing room, I saw how much it could help other independent caregivers too.
You and your wife have boarded dogs out of your own home in Salt Lake City for six years, often housing eight to ten dogs on any given night. What did those early years teach you about the realities of running an independent pet care business?
Eight or ten dogs under one roof means early mornings, interrupted sleep, cleaning, meals, medication, client messages, and constant attention to which dogs are comfortable together. It asks a lot of your body and attention, and it is hard to pause.
I learned that care needs structure behind it. A missed feeding note or a gate left unchecked matters far more than a polished website. Independent professionals need clear limits, sustainable prices, and routines they can follow on a tired Tuesday. Loving the dogs gets you into this work. Good systems help you stay in it.
Before Houndtrust existed, you were managing everything through group texts, sticky notes, and a paper calendar. What was the exact moment you decided the industry needed pet sitting software for independent pros rather than another spreadsheet fix?
There was no lightning-bolt moment.
It was one more evening spent searching old texts for feeding instructions, checking a paper calendar, looking for a waiver, and trying to remember who had paid.
A spreadsheet could store some of that information, but it could not fix the handoff between a client and a caregiver. I needed the client to provide the right details once, sign the paperwork, and have it stay with the booking. That was when I stopped patching the old process and started building Houndtrust.
On your site, you go by the name Dave Waggins rather than your full legal name. What made you choose to build this persona around your own business instead of presenting yourself purely as a software founder?
Dave Waggins started as a small joke built from my own name and wagging dogs. It is close enough to me to feel honest and playful enough to fit the work. Dog care is personal. Clients know our home, our dogs, and a good part of our daily routine.
I did not want to hide behind a formal software-founder identity. I am still the person cleaning the yard, reassuring a worried owner, and checking the calendar before I accept another dog. That working-boarder point of view is why Houndtrust exists, so I wanted it visible from the start.
How would you describe your pet sitting software to someone who has never used a platform like Rover or Wag and only knows paper waivers and text message updates?
Think of it as the office behind your care business. The waiver, care notes, booking dates, client updates, and payment record stay together instead of living in separate places.
The client does not have to download an app or learn a complicated system. They use a private link, and the caregiver runs the booking from one workspace. The point is simple: less hunting through messages and more time for the actual work.
Trust Link sits at the center of the Houndtrust product, one of the standout features of your pet sitting software. Walk us through what happens the moment a client receives one, from the first form they fill out to the moment you review their request.
It’s very simple…
The caregiver sends a private Trust Link by text, email, QR code, or through their website. The pet parent opens it on a phone and adds contact information, the dog’s care and behavior details, food and medication directions, veterinary information, and emergency instructions.
The requested dates and signed care agreement return with that record. Before accepting the stay, the caregiver can review the dog, the service, the care needs, and the emergency authorization in one place. The client enters the information once, and the professional decides whether the booking is a good fit.
Where do you see the biggest gap between what platforms like Rover offer independent sitters and what true pet sitting software should actually deliver?
A marketplace is always built to introduce two people and keep the transaction within its system. Business software begins after an independent professional has earned the relationship.
That professional needs control over rates, records, paperwork, communication, and client history. The family should know who is caring for their pet, and the caregiver should be able to build a business around the trust they earned.
The biggest gap is ownership: whose business, whose client, and whose name the family remembers.
You publish real numbers from your own business, including an anonymized 33 stay export showing over two thousand dollars in platform fees. Why was it important to you to put your own financial data out in public rather than relying on hypothetical numbers?
A hypothetical example is easy to dismiss.
Our 33-stay record showed $11,385.50 in service charges and $2,277.10 in sitter fees. That was $2,277.10 that our small business did not keep.
I wanted another caregiver to see the same math I saw and decide whether that arrangement still made sense for their business. Publishing our record also holds me accountable. If I ask people to compare costs, I should show the numbers behind my own decision.
Houndtrust takes no percentage cut from the clients a professional brings themselves. How does that pricing philosophy change the kind of pet sitting software you were able to design?
Houndtrust is business software, so it does not charge a marketplace commission on clients the professional brings. The caregiver sets the price and chooses how clients pay. Houndtrust has to earn its place by making the office work easier.
Optional connected-card payments do have clearly stated automation and processing fees. Those pay for a chosen payment workflow; they are not a claim on every booking. If a professional leaves Houndtrust, the client relationships they brought are still theirs.
A lot of dog care professionals compare Houndtrust to Rover, Wag, and Precise Petcare. What do those comparisons usually miss about how independent boarders and sitters actually operate day to day?
Home boarding does not fit neatly into appointment slots. One dog may stay for nine days, another arrives at dinner, and two dogs from different homes may be a poor match even when the calendar shows an open space. Real capacity depends on the dogs, the household, the layout of the home, and the caregiver’s limits.
The operator may answer a new inquiry while preparing food for ten dogs. A feature checklist misses that context. The better question is whether the software lowers the mental load when the house is already full.
You built Pip, an AI writing assistant, directly into the product. What role does AI play inside pet sitting software, and where did you decide it should stop?
Pip helps with the blank page. A caregiver adds what actually happened that day, chooses a tone, and gets a draft of the client update. Nothing is sent until the caregiver reviews and edits it.
AI should always take a back seat to the judgment of the caregiver and the pet parent. Pip should never diagnose a dog, choose treatment, make an emergency decision, or invent an observation. It can help with the small things around the care. The people who know the dog remain responsible for the decisions.
Waivers and emergency vet authorizations are easy to lose track of on paper. How does Houndtrust make sure that paperwork never becomes the reason a dog does not get the care it needs?
Houndtrust keeps the signed care agreement, emergency authorization, veterinary details, and care record with the booking. The caregiver does not have to remember which drawer holds the form or search an old message during an urgent situation.
Software cannot replace preparation or good judgment. It can put the signed record, the parent’s authorization, and the veterinarian’s contact information within reach. When a dog needs help, those facts should already be in front of the caregiver.
You offer a free plan alongside your Solo tier. How do you think about the tradeoff between giving away enough value for free and still building sustainable pet sitting software?
Flexible is $0 per month and includes the core client, booking, calendar, agreement, and payment-request workflow. It includes five booking completions paid outside Houndtrust card checkout each calendar month. Connected-card bookings do not use that allowance. On Flexible, a qualifying completed card booking has a $5 fee.
Solo is currently $24 per month. It removes the $5 Flexible fee and includes unlimited manual booking completions, Pip, reminders, branding, and the money dashboard. Connected-card payments on either plan have a separate 1.5% Houndtrust automation fee on the care subtotal, with tips excluded, plus Stripe processing.
AI also helps us build and improve Houndtrust with a smaller team. Keeping our own costs down gives us room to keep prices low for independent professionals. The free plan can run a small business, and Solo earns its price by taking more routine work off the caregiver’s plate.
The first three hundred professionals on Houndtrust locked in a founding price and a Founding Operator status for life. What was the thinking behind rewarding your earliest users that way?
The first 300 professionals receive the current $24 founding price, compared with the published $49 regular price. Their Founding Operator status lasts for life.
Early users are willing to try the unfinished edges, point out what is confusing, and help decide what deserves attention. The status is a lasting thank-you for that work. I want them to be able to say they helped shape Houndtrust while it was still small, because they did.
You also built a free seven day course covering pricing, paperwork, and getting clients. Why did teaching the business side feel as important as building the pet sitting software itself?
Software cannot fix an underpriced business, missing paperwork, or a home taking more dogs than it can safely handle. Too many good caregivers learn those lessons through exhaustion or an expensive mistake.
The course shares what six years of home boarding taught us about the business around the dogs. It is free because the information can help someone before they need software, even if they never pay Houndtrust. I want independent caregivers to build businesses they can afford to keep running.
Your site includes a community board and a Stay Card feed for pet owners, not just tools for professionals. How do those features change the relationship between a pet sitter and the families who trust them with their dogs?
Families want to feel that their dog is known. A good update includes the small things a caregiver noticed, such as where the dog chose to nap or how they settled after dinner.
Stay Cards give those moments a little personality and keep the caregiver’s name attached to the update. The community board gives families a place to share and enjoy them.
What matters is that a real person paid attention to their dog. The card is a useful way to share that care.
For a solo boarder juggling ten dogs a night, what does a typical week look like once they have fully adopted pet sitting software instead of managing everything by hand?
At the start of the week, the calendar answers who is arriving, who is going home, and where stays overlap. New requests already have the care details and signed information attached.
Shortly before drop-off, a Quick Trust Link asks the family what has changed. If the dog is sick, the routine is different, or the care instructions have been updated, the boarder sees it before the dog arrives.
During the stay, client messages stay with the booking. At checkout, the payment request and balance are ready. Ten dogs are still ten dogs. Houndtrust keeps the office work from making a full house harder than it already is.
You mention on your site that you have built other products outside of pet care, like BIDonBOT and Whale Fortunes. How does building across such different industries change the way you approach a niche tool like Houndtrust?
Building in different industries taught me to question my first idea and look for the repeated frustration underneath it. People rarely need another clever feature. They need one difficult job to become easier.
Houndtrust is different because I use it in our own boarding business. I can test an idea against a real week instead of an imagined workflow. If a feature adds setup or slows me down on a busy day, its technical cleverness does not matter.
What feedback from real dog boarders and sitters has pushed you to change direction on a feature you originally thought pet sitting software absolutely needed?
I originally thought a complete intake record solved the care-details problem. Running our own boarding business showed me the flaw in that idea. A stay may be booked weeks ahead. By drop-off, the dog may be sick, taking a new medication, eating different food, or following a new routine.
That led to the Quick Trust Link, a short check-in before the stay. The family updates only what changed instead of completing the full intake again. It taught me that information is not finished simply because someone filled out a form once. The right update has to arrive at the right time.
Insurance costs and coverage questions come up constantly for independent boarders using pet sitting software. Why did you decide to publish a dedicated guide on this instead of leaving it to third party blogs?
Home boarders need questions that match what actually happens inside a home. A low quote may look fine until the policy excludes business use, overnight boarding, animals in your care, or the number of dogs you truly host.
I wrote the guide to help caregivers have a better conversation with a licensed insurance agent. It covers in-home boarding, animal bailee or care-custody-control coverage, limits, and common exclusions. Houndtrust is not an insurer, but it can help a small operator arrive prepared and ask what their business actually needs.
As Houndtrust grows beyond your own dog boarding business, how do you keep pet sitting software from turning into the same bloated platform experience you originally built it to avoid?
Houndtrust has a short job description: help an independent professional handle intake, bookings, paperwork, updates, and getting paid. A new feature has to remove a burden in that work. If it adds more setup than relief, it does not belong.
Using Houndtrust with our own clients makes clutter hard to ignore. The Solo experience should stay calm enough to use between feeding the dogs and answering the door.
For professionals who want to grow, Houndtrust Teams is coming soon. It will give an experienced pet-care professional a practical way to teach someone newer, manage their work, and bring on additional people as demand grows. Houndtrust handles the assignments, schedules, client and pet records, and routine administration in one place. That leaves the owner more time to guide the team and protect the quality of care. Houndtrust Teams gives a growing business room to expand while Solo stays focused on the independent caregiver.
You still run your own boarding business on Houndtrust every day. How does staying hands on with real clients change the decisions you make as a founder compared to if you had stepped away from the day to day work?
Being both the operator and the founder makes feedback immediate. If a client cannot find a field, I hear about it. If the calendar hides a drop-off time, I feel it while getting the house ready.
That changes my priorities. A small frustration that happens every day matters more than an impressive idea that looks good in a demo. I see where families hesitate and what I need at a glance before a dog arrives. Those moments decide what gets fixed next.
Where do you see the next twelve months taking pet sitting software, both for Houndtrust specifically and for the wider industry of solo dog care professionals?
For Houndtrust, the next year is about letting a care professional talk to the assistant already on their phone and manage the business through ordinary conversation.
We are preparing a secure API using MCP so that, after signing in and approving access, someone can connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex. Eventually, they should be able to update any part of the business they have authorized, from the schedule and pet records to bookings, client messages, and unfinished tasks.
Houndtrust will control what the assistant may see and do, and important actions will wait for human approval. I believe people and AI can work side by side right now. Paperwork, routine texts, reminders, scheduling, and follow-up can happen faster and at a lower cost.
That can help a small care business run with less overhead and leave more money in the caregiver’s pocket. The technology stays in the background. The caregiver and pet parent remain in charge of the dog’s care.
If a new solo sitter or home boarder came to you today with nothing but a handful of clients and a notebook, what is the very first change you would tell them to make?
Create one repeatable intake process before accepting the next booking. Stop letting care details arrive piecemeal across old texts, phone calls, and scraps of paper. Every family should answer the same essential questions and sign the same agreement.
It does not have to look fancy. It has to work every time. Memory becomes unreliable when you are tired or caring for several dogs with different needs. A clear record should be ready before the dog walks through the door.
As we wrap up, what do you want independent pet care professionals to understand about the future of pet sitting software and the businesses they are building around it?
A small pet care business can be highly professional and still feel personal. Growth does not have to mean a large staff or a commercial facility. It can mean better boundaries, steadier income, and more time to care well.
Independent pet-care professionals are building real local businesses around trust. Their software should respect the work, keep their records useful, and support the relationships they earned. Small is a valid way to build a strong business, and the tools should be built with that person in mind.
Thank you, David, for the honesty and detail you brought to this conversation, and for the years of hands-on work behind it. Not every founder can speak from inside the exact problem they’re solving, but David still boards dogs in his own home, which means every answer here comes from lived experience rather than theory.
What stands out about his story isn’t the software. It’s the discipline behind it. Because he still runs his own boarding business, every feature in Houndtrust has to survive a real week before it earns a place in the product. If it adds friction on a morning when ten dogs need feeding, it gets cut, no matter how good it looked on paper.
That same instinct is shaping where Houndtrust goes next: AI support for the routine parts of the job, a Teams feature for professionals ready to bring on help, and a free course built from lessons David only learned by living through them. None of it is designed to make the business bigger for its own sake. It’s designed to make one difficult job, caring for animals while still running a company, a little easier to sustain.
For independent sitters and boarders still working out of a notebook, David’s path offers a straightforward case: build the systems before you need them, price the work honestly, and never let the size of your business decide how seriously you take it.
