About Pet Sitters, Long Island
Long Island Pet Sitting and Dog Walking. Pet Sitters Club, Inc. Serving Long Island’s North Shore since 1999
Founded in 1999 by James and Naomi Garfinkel of Great Neck, NY, Pet Sitters Club Inc. has provided pet sitting and dog walking services to over 3,000 satisfied pet sitting customers throughout the North Shore of Long Island.
We started Pet Sitters Club because of the love or our cats. We always struggled to find excellent care for our pets and decided to provide the service that we were looking for ourselves. While we both graduated with business backgrounds, we chose this profession because of our tremendous love for the animals in our lives. We truly love what we do every day and that shows in the quality of the service we provide.
We look forward to meeting you and your pets. Thank you for visiting our website!
Woof Woofs and Meows,
James and Naomi Garfinkel
Long Island, NY pet sitting & Dog Walking
Pet Sitters Club, Serving Long Island’s North Shore since 1999.
How It All Began
We both always knew we’d end up owning our own business. It all started one Sunday morning while reading a NYT article about a couple that gave up their high pressure corporate jobs to move out into the woods and collect pine cones and resell them to florists, gift shops, etc. They didn’t make as much money as they once did but were extremely happy and loved what they did every day. When we read that article we knew that one day we’d be the pine cone people but in another form.
Jamey had owned his own garment manufacturing business when one day he received a notice that his landlord was selling the building and would not renew his lease. At that time the business had seen a big downturn due to manufacturing moving overseas. We decided it was not prudent to move the factory and that it was time for him to reinvent himself and find what his new passion would be for the rest of his life. I was in sales and marketing in the health care industry and while I liked what I did, I knew that there had to be more to life than commuting and getting that awful pit in your stomach every Sunday night before returning to work the next day.
While traveling on vacation we always struggled with who would watch our dogs and cats. We had a vacation planned during the time the factory was closing and of course had to once again beg family, friends and neighbors share the responsibility of taking care of our cats at the time. While sitting on the beach chatting with a nice couple from Boston we were sharing our pet stories and happened to ask who watched their pets while they were away and they said their Pet Sitter of course.
Call it fate, destiny or just the earth’s gravitational pull – our minds were ready for our new future. When we returned from that trip we hit the ground running. Researching the Pet Sitting industry and the demographics of our area we knew this was a need that had to be filled. January 1999 Pet Sitters Club, Inc. was born.
Jamey was the physical being of our business doing all of mid-day dog walking in addition to the morning, afternoon and evening visits for any vacation Pet Sitting customers which included not only cats and dogs but birds, iguanas, bunnies, etc. I continued to work in my 9-5 job commuting from Great Neck, NY and in the evenings worked on marketing and scheduling as well as walking many dogs and cleaning lots of litter boxes on the weekends. Neither of us had ever worked so hard in our lives nor had we ever been as happy doing what we loved most, being with dogs and cats all day was very rewarding. On the one year anniversary of our business I told Jamey that I wanted to quit my 9-5 job to become a full time employee of Pet Sitters Club, Inc.
Here we are 16 years later with almost 3000 customers and many employees. We are now our version of the Pine Cone people, not making as much money as we once did but loving what we do every day and never waking up with a pit in our stomachs thinking about going to work the next day. We truly have found our passion and that is the greatest gift we could have ever asked for in life.
