Apparently 25 is Allie Clegg's lucky number. In 2025 she will be 25 years old. By that time she hopes to have 25 locations for her pet sitting business, Allie’s Walkabout. The 15 year old girl started the company when she was just 9 years old and is currently running it out of her family’s home in Villa Hills, Kentucky.
Allie started her business when she was 9 years old after some good advice from her father. When she asked him for some money to buy some candy from a local shop, he saw the teachable moment and told her she would need to earn it. He suggested she ask some of their neighbors if they needed any help with chores, like maybe walking their dog.
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She enlisted the help of her younger, 7 at the time, and together they earned $6 by walking a neighbor’s dog. Allie not only earned the money for her candy, but also found her passion. Dogs. She loves being around them and helping to care for them.
Since then the business has significantly grown, and now Allie’s Walkabout offers dog sitting, dog walking, doggy daycare, pooper scooping, and grooming services.
Allie is already working with her family to expand the business. They are looking to move the shop to Independence and find a bigger facility. At the Independence council meeting in April, she and her father, David Clegg, formally approached the council to share their plan for moving the business into an old Kroger’s space that is vacant in the Independence Town Center.
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David says that the family chose Independence because it is one of the fastest growing cities in Northern Kentucky and there are a lot of young families moving to the area. A greater human population means a greater canine population, and that’s exactly what the company needs.
The Clegg’s are also looking into another location in Erlanger, but they are very focused on the Independence area. David said that about 48 percent of homes in Independence and the surrounding communities have dogs. Councilman Tom Brinker agrees with the family and believes that Allie’s Walkabout would be a great fit for the area.
Allie says that her family has been looking for an appropriate space for about two years, but the timing and the spaces they’ve seen have never been just right. She says that now would be a perfect time to grow the business and the family is very hopeful.
