The founder

Dave Waggins: 6-Year Home Boarder, Founder of Houndtrust

“Quit everything but the dogs.”

Hi, I’m Dave Waggins. My wife and I have boarded dogs out of our own home in Salt Lake City for six years, most nights eight to ten dogs. We’ve done Rover, we’ve done private clients, we’ve done every angle of this business. I built Houndtrust to run the business side of ours, and I still run my own on it every day.

Why I built this

For years my business lived in group texts, sticky notes, and a paper calendar. The admin was slowly eating the part of the job I actually love: the dogs. Every booking meant chasing a waiver, every stay meant remembering to send an update, and every month meant piecing together who had paid from three different apps.

So I built the tool I wished existed. One workspace handles the intake, the bookings, the waivers, the updates, and the money, and my clients feel more looked after, not less. It runs my business quietly in the background now, and it does the same for other solo pros. I didn’t set out to build software. I set out to stop drowning in paperwork so I could get back to the dogs.

The math in it is not theory

Everything in Houndtrust and everything I write on this site comes from running the real business, including the parts that sting. The dog boarding income case study publishes an anonymized, Rover-only 33-stay export with $2,277.10 in platform fees. Our private clients are not included in those figures. The rest of the fee math in the guides and the free course starts with the rates and booking volume I use in a working home. When a page models a market test that does not apply in Salt Lake City, I label it as a scenario. That’s why I write in the first person and put my name on it: a home boarder should be able to hear this from someone who actually does the work.

If you want one system for the clients you acquire independently, that’s exactly the itch Houndtrust scratches. You take the dogs. It takes the paperwork. It charges no marketplace booking commission.