Annie Lever was born in Michigan and has a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan--but her real passion is animals.

She grew up in the small town of Flushing, Michigan, north of Flint, with five siblings and a countless array of dogs and cats. “Our place was like a farm. We had lots of room so I was always bringing home strays,” Annie remembers. “I would lie and tell my mother that they followed me home.”

She moved to Southern California in 1982 to pursue a career in the art world, working first as gallery manager and later as an independent art dealer.

But she never lost her interest in animals. Annie became a volunteer at the Amanda Foundation in Beverly Hills, a group that rescues dogs and cats from area shelters and puts them up for adoption.

Walking the dog
Annie Lever started her career as a dog walker 10 years ago. She had just gotten fired from her job in a dermatologist’s office because, she jokes,“ I can’t get along with people.”

She was living in Long Beach with her black Lab, Luke. “I was really busy so I hired Gail Goldberg to walk him during the day. I knew where Gail lived, and I knew she owned her own home, so I did the math and decided to do what she did.”

She had business cards printed up and immediately hit the dog parks around Beverly Hills and Brentwood. It made sense, she says. “That part of town has a lot of condo dwellers, a lot of busy people, and a lot of money.”

Though she didn’t have a single client, she drove up from Long Beach every day and walked her own dog, passing out cards and telling people she was a professional dog walker.

In the beginning she didn’t make enough money to pay for the gas in her Toyota Tercel. But within six months Annie was working full time, and in her first year she made $31,000.

“Back in those days there just weren’t that many dog walkers. Well-off people who didn’t have time to walk their dogs had their housekeepers do it. Now I see ten professional dog walkers a day -- it’s just a huge, growing business.”

‘The new waiting tables’
“When I tell people that I walk dogs for a living,” Annie says, “a lot of people are, like, ‘but what do you really want to do?’ They assume this is just something to do while I wait for my big break. This is my big break.”

She says dog walking has become “the new waiting tables” for aspiring actors and others. Her approach to the job is different.

Annie walks up to 24 dogs a day in three groups and each dog gets a full hour of off-leash hiking and play. “I see dog walkers walking down the street with five dogs on a leash and I wonder how they do it. It can’t be much fun for the dog.”

She takes her dogs on trips to the beach, reports on their health and behavior, gives them food and medicine, and sometimes baby sits the dogs while their owners are away. “I think of myself as more than just a dog walker. I’m a pet nanny,”

The business is lucrative--and hard. She leaves the house at 7:30 each weekday morning and doesn’t return home until 10 hours later. Annie spends most of the day driving the busy streets and hillside roads of L.A.’s west side; her three-year old SUV has 51,000 miles and a lot of dog on it.

Annie makes $150,000 a year, but only because she walks so many dogs and supplements her income by pet-sitting. Her fee for picking up, walking and returning a dog home is $28, or about $9 an hour per dog.

“I love my job,” she says. “First and foremost I’m with animals all day long. I’m outside getting exercise. I come in contact with extraordinary people. And I make a good living.”

But dog walking is no dream job, Annie says. “This isn’t a job you take because you think it’s easy, because it’s not. You have to really love dogs, and you have to work really hard, and you have to give up a big part of your life, because you really never know when a animal or his owner will need you.”

Dog lessons
In ten years of walking dogs, Annie says she’s learned a lot about dogs--and a lot from them.

“The easiest way to control my dogs is to get into their mindset. People project their own thought processes on dogs, but dogs are not that complex,” she says.

“A dog will get in a scuffle with another dog and they get right over it. They don’t get resentments. They know how to be happy. That’s what they teach me,” she says. “How to be happy.”

It’s a lesson she gets to learn every day.