Five-spot is slang that was used for the five-dollar bill in the 1930s. Click here to check out the new look!Close

This past summer, my friend Natalie and I opened up a small neighborhood business. It was tricky, but fun!
Natalie and I got to play with puppies for a month!

Natalie and I walked dogs, played with them, and trained them every Saturday for a month.

Training

Part of Puppy Playhouse was training and walking the dogs.

For the training, we taught the dogs the basics:

• Sit
• Stay
• Down
• Roll over

Most of the training was pretty easy, but when it came to Stay the dogs were a little too energetic. But it was still fun.

Here are some good training tips for dogs.

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Tell people about it

We spent about and hour and a half making fliers that advertised our business.

We Made Fliers

Here's the front side. The back gave the "who, when, where and contact" details.Close

The fliers didn't cost us a thing—we reused paper, and hand-delivered the fliers ourselves.

Then, we gave all of our neighbors with dogs a flier, and you know what? Only three out of ten people signed up! But at least they signed up, and we still had lots of fun doing it.

The commitment

Natalie leads Mitzie

One tricky part of our business was that since we told our neighbors we'd be there every Saturday for an entire month, we had to make sure we were there. Two of the Saturdays, Natalie couldn't make it.

Since there were three dogs, I needed to find a sub. It would have been hard to do it by myself since two of the dogs didn't get along. Luckily I found a friend to help me.

Natalie and I (and the sub) usually took the dogs on a bike path around our neighborhood. The walk was about 15 to 20 minutes long

Each Saturday we made sure we were on time to pick up the dogs and that we took good care of them.

We even had to clean up their business. Even if you're a kid it's important to be responsible...