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<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image">Business Insider/Alyson ShontellDogvacay CEO and co-founder Aaron Hirschhorn with his dog, Rocky.</div></div>A few years ago, Aaron Hirschhorn and his wife Karine went to visit their family on the east coast. They left their two dogs, Rocky and Rainbow, in a kennel. It cost them $1,400 - more than their trip - and Rocky hid under Hirschhorn's desk for the next two days.
"It was clearly a bad experience," Hirschhorn told Business Insider last week in Santa Monica.
He and his wife started brainstorming better solutions and then spent 2011 turning their home into a dog-sitting hotspot. Over the course of the year, they took in 100 dogs when friends went out of town. The result was DogVacay, a network of local dog-sitters which has raised $22 million from investors such as First Round Capital, Benchmark and Andreessen Horowitz.
Any animal lover can <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dogvacay-review-2014-1">become a dog-sitter on DogVacay</a> with a little bit of training. Hirschhorn says common sitters include busy professionals who want to spend a few weekends a year taking dogs to the park, or retirees who don't want to commit to a new pet full-time. Hosts set their own prices, but the average comes out to $28 per night. A kennel can cost $50 on up to $80 per night.
There have been situations where animals have gotten injured - or worse, died - while being dog-sat by DogVacay users. Hirschhorn says hosts are given up to $3 million in insurance and dogs are covered up to $25,000. He also says his team has 24/7 customer service and owners can receive photo updates of their pets on the app while they're away.
For the most part, the app is a life-saver. "There are 78 million dogs in the US, which is more than there are kids, so a lot of people have dogs and our service helps them with a real need," says Hirschhorn.
He let us tour his puppy-filled headquarters. Here's where the dog-lovers congregate.

DogVacay Connects Pet Owners With Pet Sitters And The Startup's Santa Monica Office Looks Like Puppy Heaven

<div class="image-container float_right click-to-enlarge" style="width:394px"><div class="image"><a title_source="Ramona the Love Terrier" title_caption="Will Ramona the Love Terrier makes herself at home in a stranger's place?" class="zoomin" href="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/511967f96bb3f7456e000003-960/ramona-the-love-terrier.jpg"></a></div><a href="http://facebook.com/ramonatheloveterrier">Ramona the Love Terrier</a>Will Ramona the Love Terrier makes herself at home in a stranger's place?</div>Keep your fingers crossed for <a href="http://dogvacay.com/">DogVacay</a>, an "Airbnb for dogs."
The site got a lot of Silicon Valley buzz and raised $7 million from top-notch investors.
Whether it can generate enough revenue to survive, however, is an open question.
Cofounder <keyword id="1769461" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Aaron-Hirschhorn">Aaron Hirschhorn</keyword> told Business Insider that the marketplace for long-term dogsitting arrangements is close to having paid out $2 million to approximately 9,000 hosts. That's up from $1 million paid out in mid-November.
To date, <keyword id="1769460" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="DogVacay">DogVacay</keyword> has booked more than 75,000 dog-nights.
That sounds fantastic: Clearly, there's a decent number of consumers interested in the service.
However, DogVacay collects a 15% cut of boarding fees when a dog owner agrees to board his pet with a host. So its revenues from hosting fees, based on the $2 million figure, are around $300,000. (Or less: DogVacay originally charged a 10% cut, later raising it.)
DogVacay's average rates are $28 a night, which is about half what a kennel would cost.
We asked Hirschhorn, who started the company with his wife, Karine, in 2011, why it would disclose a proxy for its revenues at such an early stage.
"For a private company like us, I feel like we're being extremely transparent," said Hirschhorn.
Those payouts don't include marketing expenses like the <a href="http://dogvacay.com/pack-leader">$10 incentive payment</a> DogVacay offers to hosts who sign up new customers—who also get $10 coupons. DogVacay has offered <a href="http://yipit.com/business/dog-vacay/">numerous daily-deal discounts</a> through Groupon and others, but besides those, Hirschhorn says that most of the company's marketing has been word of mouth.
Can DogVacay make money in other ways besides hosting fees? The company also sells <a href="http://dogvacay.com/premium">discounted premium insurance policies</a> to dogsitters for $48 a year, but Hirschhorn said that's not a significant revenue source. Selling add-on services like grooming and dogwalking contributes a "material" amount of revenue, he said.
The company is also testing GPS dog collars with 15 to 20 hosts in the Los Angeles area, so owners can see what their dogs are up to. It doesn't charge for those at present, but it plans to.
The Hirschhorns personally made $30,000 over eight months through DogVacay-style dog boarding before launching the company—enough to fund their wedding and a honeymoon on three southern Caribbean islands, and to allow them to quit their jobs and start the company. So clearly it can work on some limited basis.
But DogVacay has yet to prove that it can scale its model up to the mass level, and generate enough sales to keep investors happy. The company <a href="http://www.openforum.com/articles/aaron-hirschhorn-of-dog-vacay-building-an-empire/">has 23 employees</a>, Aaron Hirschhorn told Open Forum earlier this month.
Hirschhorn says that his company is the largest player in the peer-to-peer pet services space.
That raises questions about how many big opportunities there really are in the field of "<keyword id="1769463" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Collaborative-Consumption">collaborative consumption</keyword>," where consumers sell underused resources like empty seats in their cars, empty beds in their guest rooms, and empty dog beds next to those guest beds.
Which is a bummer, because we would love to know that we have backup options if <a href="http://facebook.com/ramonatheloveterrier">Ramona the Love Terrier</a> ever needs a vacation.

DogVacay's Revenue Picture Looks ... Ruff

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dogvacay-office-2014-1">Business Insider/Alyson Shontell</a></div></div></div>DogVacay was founded in 2011 and it has helped hundreds of thousands of dogs avoid kennels while their owners are out of town.
Often dubbed the "Airbnb for dogs," <a href="http://www.dogvacay.com">DogVacay</a> connects dog owners with local dog-sitters who want to make a few extra dollars without the full-time commitment of owning a pet. 
Inevitably, when you work with a high-volume of dogs, a few are going to die while owners are out of town. Sometimes they're elderly. Sometimes, accidents happen.
How does DogVacay deal with doggy deaths on its network?
We asked CEO and co-founder Aaron Hirschhorn. He said there have been a few deaths, but the company does everything it can to help both the hosts and the owners handle it. (Note: he says there haven't been any reported dog-nappings!)
For starters, DogVacay has a good insurance plan for both the dogs and the hosts. Hirschhorn says hosts are covered up to $3 million and dogs are covered up to $25,000. Additionally, there's a 24/7 customer support team that works in shifts to make sure someone is available for hosts and owners' needs all through the night. DogVacay's mobile app is pretty robust too.
"On the mobile app, you can get photo updates," says Hirschhorn. "We're working on a lot of cool device integrations so you'll see where your dog is on a map, how much exercise they've had for the day, and you can even buy them a bone remotely while you're traveling."
So, what happens when a dog gets injured or dies during a DogVacay stay?
"Dogs are like family, we take all that so seriously," Hirschhorn says. "With the 24/7 customer support and insurance, we're always there helping our hosts. We've watched hundreds of thousands of dogs so unfortunately there have been a couple who died. A couple elderly dogs have passed away. It's sadly a matter of the business. Our job is to be there and support everybody throughout the process as much as possible. But it really breaks our hearts."
Hirschhorn says DogVacay, not the host, is responsible for reporting news of a dog injury or death to the owner. They also help animals get to the vet quickly as soon as a host notifies them of a problem.
"A more common thing that will happen is a dog will jump off the bed and sprain an ankle, or a dog will eat something and get a little sick," says Hirschhorn. "They call us and we make sure they're immediately taken to the vet. We take care of everything, we make sure the guest is notified, let them know what we're doing, we support the host through the experience."
Basically, they try to have the best customer service available to help everyone through the tough time.

How DogVacay - A Dog-Sitting Startup - Handles Dogs Who Die While Their Owners Are Away

I have avoided boarding my dog, Rupert, for six years. 
I'm admittedly overly sensitive when it comes to his comforts, and the thought of leaving him in an outrageously priced, pee-covered cage for several days at a time has never really appealed to me.
But I ran out of options earlier this month when I had to leave town for the weekend. Practically everyone I know was gone for the holidays. For the first time, I considered boarding him.
I made some phone calls and found out that every boarding option in my neighborhood costs about $80 per night. 
Most of them offer webcams so pet owners can check in on their animals from afar, but the cameras only added to my anxiety when I saw how dozens of dogs were crammed into Manhattan-sized, indoor concrete "playgrounds."
Then I recalled hearing about <a href="https://dogvacay.com">DogVacay</a>, the so-called "Airbnb for dogs." It's a website that matches dog owners with prospective caretakers, or "hosts," for about half the price of boarding.
I was skeptical of leaving Rupert with a stranger, but I decided to give it a try.
I landed on DogVacay's homepage and input the dates that I would be out of town. The search yielded hundreds of potential hosts for Rupert, many of whom were located within a half mile of my apartment. 

Most of the DogVacay hosts' profile pages contain detailed summaries of their services, reviews from former customers, and photos of themselves, their living quarters, and their previous animal tenants. I spent an embarrassing amount of time scrolling through all of Rupert's options before carefully selecting four potential hosts.
I contacted the hosts through the website's internal messaging system, because DogVacay doesn't initially give out the hosts' email addresses or last names. This is to partially help ensure that the hosts don't book appointments outside of DogVacay, as the company gets a 15% cut of all boarding fees.
I heard back from every host within a couple hours and settled on Rebecca, whose last name I'm excluding from this article to protect her privacy. At $50 a night - a little pricier than the average DogVacay stay - I booked Rebecca for three nights. 
Then came <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/map-heres-the-wall-of-snow-hitting-nyc-2014-1">winter storm Hercules</a>. My flight out of New York was cancelled and then repeatedly delayed. 
I ended up dropping Rupert off one day later than planned. I had prepaid for the boarding, but Rebecca called DogVacay for me and had one night's fees removed to reflect the change. She handled the travel issues with ease.
After dropping him off, I got a text from Rebecca almost immediately giving me a status update. (Rupert was "having tons of fun already" and romping in the snow with her pug, Wilbur).
Then I got nightly emails with photos, like this one, of Rupert and Wilbur:

I was pleased with the updates. I heard about Rupert's naps, his trips outside, and his general well-being all weekend. And when my flight back to New York was delayed by one day, it was easy to extend my reservation. 
Rebecca later told me that she's been a DogVacay host since August 2012 and takes care of 10 dogs a month on average, for varying amounts of time, from one day to weeks at a time.
For some hosts, working with DogVacay has led to a full-time job that pays the rent. Pet-sitter Michael Lam told <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/woof-start-dogvacay-tackles-11-194027089.html">CNBC</a> he started working with DogVacay when he was a programmer for Goldman Sachs. He's now a full-time dog host and certified dog trainer.
The company won't reveal details on its revenues, though CEO Aaron Hirschhorn told <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/woof-start-dogvacay-tackles-11-194027089.html">CNBC</a> in August that the site's bookings had grown 10-fold in 2013.
"DogVacay has paid out millions of dollars to its 11,000 hosts across more than 2,500 cities in the U.S. and Canada," DogVacay spokeswoman Corinna Pielock told Business Insider. "The U.S. pet services market is $11 billion annually and surprisingly there are 78 million dogs in the U.S. - more dogs than there are kids (73 million)."
According to the American Pet Products Association, Americans spent an estimated $55 billion on their pets in 2013, including an average $327 annually on boarding, according to the American Pet Products Association.
As I noted earlier, DogVacay keeps 15% of hosts' charges, which range from $20 to $70 per night for boarding in New York City. Hosts can also offer dog walking, cat sitting, grooming and other services through the website. 
Some have questioned, however, whether the company can <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dogvacays-revenues-for-2012-2013-2">generate enough revenue to survive. </a>
From a purely personal perspective, I hope it does; because I'll definitely be using it again.

I Tried DogVacay, The 'Airbnb For Dogs,' And I Loved It

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>The online dog-sitting community DogVacay just raised $25 million, bringing its total venture funding to $47 million, <a href="http://fortune.com/2014/11/10/dogvacay-raises-25-million/">Fortune</a> reports. 
The so-called "Airbnb for dogs" got the Series B1 round of funding from <a href="http://www.omersventures.com/">Omers Ventures</a> and GSV Capital, as well as existing investors including Science Inc., First Round Capital, Benchmark, Foundation Capital, and DAG Ventures, according to Fortune. 
I tried the service, which connects pet owners and sitters online, for the first time last year after avoiding boarding my dog Rupert for six years. 
I'm admittedly overly sensitive when it comes to Rupert's comforts and I have never been crazy about the idea of leaving him in a small pee-covered kennel for days at a time. 
But I ran out of options last fall when I had to leave town for the weekend and everyone I knew was gone for the holidays. 
So I decided to explore DogVacay.
I went to the homepage and input the dates that I would be out of town and the search yielded hundreds of potential hosts for Rupert, many of whom were located within a half mile of my apartment.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"></div></div>
The options ranged from $35 to $80 a night. Most of the traditional boarding locations in Manhattan charge at least $80 a night.
Most of the DogVacay hosts' profile pages contain detailed summaries of their services, reviews from former customers, and photos of themselves, their living quarters, and their previous animal tenants. I spent an embarrassing amount of time scrolling through all of Rupert's options before carefully selecting four potential hosts.
I contacted the hosts through the website's internal messaging system, because DogVacay doesn't initially give out the hosts' email addresses or last names. This is to partially help ensure that the hosts don't book appointments outside of DogVacay, as the company gets a 15% cut of all boarding fees.
I heard back from every host within a couple hours and settled on Rebecca, whose last name I'm excluding from this article to protect her privacy. At $50 a night - a little pricier than the average DogVacay stay - I booked Rebecca for three nights. 
<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Then came <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/map-heres-the-wall-of-snow-hitting-nyc-2014-1">winter storm Hercules</a>. My flight out of New York was cancelled and then repeatedly delayed. 
I ended up dropping Rupert off one day later than planned. I had prepaid for the boarding, but Rebecca called DogVacay for me and had one night's fees removed to reflect the change. She handled the travel issues with ease.
After dropping him off, I got a text from Rebecca almost immediately giving me a status update. (Rupert was "having tons of fun already" and romping in the snow with her pug, Wilbur).
Then I got nightly emails with photos, like this one, of Rupert and Wilbur:
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>I was pleased with the updates. I heard about Rupert's naps, his trips outside, and his general well-being all weekend. And when my flight back to New York was delayed by one day, it was easy to extend my reservation. 
Rebecca later told me that she's been a DogVacay host since August 2012 and takes care of 10 dogs a month on average, for varying amounts of time, from one day to weeks at a time.
For some hosts, working with DogVacay has led to a full-time job that pays the rent. Pet-sitter Michael Lam told <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/woof-start-dogvacay-tackles-11-194027089.html">CNBC</a> he started working with DogVacay when he was a programmer for Goldman Sachs. He's now a full-time dog host and certified dog trainer.
The company won't reveal details on its revenues, though CEO Aaron Hirschhorn told <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/woof-start-dogvacay-tackles-11-194027089.html">CNBC</a> in August that the site's bookings had grown 10-fold in 2013.
"DogVacay has paid out millions of dollars to its 11,000 hosts across more than 2,500 cities in the U.S. and Canada," DogVacay spokeswoman Corinna Pieloch told Business Insider. "The U.S. pet services market is $11 billion annually and surprisingly there are 78 million dogs in the U.S. - more dogs than there are kids (73 million)."
According to the American Pet Products Association, Americans spent an estimated $55 billion on their pets in 2013, including an average $327 annually on boarding.
As I noted earlier, DogVacay keeps 15% of hosts' charges, which range from $20 to $70 per night for boarding in New York City. Hosts can also offer dog walking, cat sitting, grooming and other services through the website. 
Some have questioned, however, whether the company can <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/dogvacays-revenues-for-2012-2013-2">generate enough revenue to survive. </a>
From a purely personal perspective, I hope it does; because I'll definitely be using it again.

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