Former Smashing Pumpkins Bassist Ditched the Touring Life to Start a Dog-Walking Company

When we reach Nicole Fiorentino on a Thursday afternoon, she is positively beaming. “Oh my god, it’s been a six-week mission,” she says, at once excited and relieved. In a former life, by “mission,” she would’ve meant playing a satisfying show to a buoyant audience in an arena. (She’s played bass for Smashing Pumpkins and Veruca Salt, among others.) But these days, it means volunteering to rescue a litter of seven kittens, fostering and adopting them out, then trapping and spaying or neutering the parents — all the while running her own dog-walking and pet-sitting company.

In 2015, Fiorentino, who’s a pet mom to her dog Nina Simone and cats Thom York and Polly Jean Harvey, ditched life on the road to dedicate her life to serving pets. Leveraging her experience in taking care of animals for extra money when she wasn’t on tour, she started The Pet Groupies.

“I was starting to get to the point where I was like, ‘I really want to be home and get a dog,’” she recalls. All of my musician friends and a lot of my family and friends were like, ‘You’re at the peak of your music career — you’re quitting now to start a dog-walking business?’” 

Today, The Pet Groupies is a dog-walking and pet-sitting company for musicians, folks in TV and film, and other pet parents that has earned a stellar reputation in both Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. Getting to this point has been a wild ride, and Fiorentino has learned a lot along the way.

So, we met up with her to chat about how her time in music has shaped her business. We also asked her for essential tips on what to look for in someone you’re trusting to take care of your bestie while you’re at work or on vacation.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

How does your background in the industry impact how you run your business?

I’ve been LA-based for almost 10 years, so a lot of [my staff] ends up being musicians, film industry people, and a lot of queer people — because being queer myself, I end up hiring within the “family.” They’re all creative types. That’s the other thing I wanted to do by starting my business: Whenever I would come home from tour, that’s kind of the side gig that I always had. So, I wanted to be able to offer that to other artists. I understand them getting a last-minute tour or an audition, but they’ll always have a job when they come home. 

Do your clients know about your music background?

I remember I did meet a new client, and her dog’s name was Starla, which is a Smashing Pumpkins song. And I was like, “Are you a big Pumpkins fan?” And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, they’re my favorite band from high school.” I was like, “I played with them for, like, four years.” Her jaw just fell to the floor. It is such an LA moment when your dog walker was also in the Smashing Pumpkins.

You have some interesting approaches to animal-rescue fundraising that leverage your music background, too.

Well, I’ve done a lot of local fundraisers with the bands I’ve been in and with my band, Bizou, that I’m currently in. It’s basically fundraising and fostering [events] for rescues like Pups Without Borders, and I’ve also done a lot of rescue work with Watts Project. There’s a bar in Highland Park [in LA], Hermosillo, that allows us to do adoption and rescue events. A portion of our merch sales or our music sales would also go to a shelter.

One of Pet Groupies’ superpowers is that you will work with so-called “difficult” dogs. How do you approach those scenarios?

You know, a lot of dogs are easy, and I can send any of my staff at that point. But if dogs have specific needs and can only have, you know, one to two walkers for whatever reason — they need to take time and warm up and get comfortable — that’s something that we definitely offer. And I’m not just gonna throw anybody into that situation. I will send one of my walkers that I know has more experience with reads like that. And I would require there to be several meetings with the owner present. You know, always bring treats into the mix. We take it really slowly.

What about dogs who are scared to leave home?

A lot of people are working from home now, and it can be hard to get [a dog] to leave home if they know that their owner’s there. So, with dogs like that, we’ll usually pick them up in the car, and drive even just down the street. We don’t try to walk them from their house. It’s figuring out how to accommodate the needs of all these different dogs and their little idiosyncrasies.

What are your tips for finding a good dog walker, especially for a new pet parent?

To start with, the company should be vetting and doing background checks on all of their employees or independent contractors. You want to make sure they’re insured and bonded as well, in case there’s any accidents. Also, the bigger companies don’t really send a manager or a representative to do an initial consultation. They are just like, “This is who you’re going to get.”

I always do the initial meet-and-greets myself. I walk your dog myself, at least for the first week or so, because they’re all so different. I want to get all their little quirks down and their routines down, and get to know them before I pass them off to anybody else. And then it’s always going to be the same three to four people in the mix, so your dog is getting to know them through walks. 

There’s solo walking, and then there are group ones. Which is better?

I think it depends a lot on the breed and the needs of the specific dog. Like, some of the questions I’ll ask people are, “How old is your dog? What’s their energy level? What’s their temperament? Are they well-socialized with other dogs?”

And how do you choose canine groups, if they’re walking or hiking together?

I kind of hand-select. I know which dogs are going to walk [well] with other dogs. Because I’m not gonna take, you know, a 10-year-old Chihuahua on a hike with, like, a two-year-old Husky. It’s going back to asking the right questions, like, “Is your dog fearful of bigger or a certain breed?” I kind of try to make myself a doggie matchmaker.

How do you determine who walks a dog?

I’ll match up a walker who has a similar energy to the dog. So I have some people on my team who are, like, cross country runners — and those are the people that have the two-year-old Husky. I think it’s just having a dog walker who asks all the right questions and wants to get your dog into the right mix. And if you’re doing group walks, they’re not going to just be going with any random dogs.

Are sniff walks underrated? I think a lot of new pet parents think walking your dog around the corner or taking them to the store with you should suffice.

Yeah, I think they can get out as much energy on a sniff walk as they can doing a hike. You just have to get to know your own dog. Try different things with your dog. Some dogs like to go on the same route every day, and they’ll guide you this way. Other dogs love to change it up, because they get to sniff different scents. Some dogs want to go on power hikes and run, and other dogs are good to just, like, go around the corner for 15 minutes and just do a little sniffing. So I think it really like is a matter of spending time to know your own dog’s needs.

What’s your take on off-leashing dogs?

Dogs obviously love nothing more than not being on a leash. And that’s a very tricky subject, because you hear about certain dog parks, and don’t know who those people are, or why they have dogs. I think it’s really important to train them, to make sure that your dog has excellent recall before you let them off-leash anywhere, especially in a situation with other dogs.

But I’ll never bring one of my client’s dogs to a dog park, even if I know dog their temperament really well. I mainly don’t trust that everybody in there knows their own dog’s temperament and understands a dog’s body language.

What is a good environment for off-leash dogs?

I usually try to get off-leash play groups together with, like, friends’ dogs or some of my clients’ doggies that my dog gets along with really well. On the weekend, I’ll be like, “Hey, you want to let them run around the yard or whatever?” Because it is so important for them to get socialization as well. Or, you know, you hire someone to take your dog in little pack-walks for socialization. I won’t put them on a walk with four to five dogs. I’ll take them with my dog first, and maybe one other dog that I know really well — and I know how they’re going to respond — so I test them really, really slowly and carefully, especially because you're going to be bringing these dogs together in a car.

What about overnight dog-sitting?

I only offer overnight pet sitting to our regular clients who use us regularly for walks. I think it’s important to have consistency for the dog getting to know the same people, because things can happen when owners go out of town, like behavior changes.

How do you prepare your staff to handle situations that might require first aid?

I train all of my walkers on how to handle those situations, and they’ve all had the first-aid test as well. I think a lot of it is instinct as well, like — you can train somebody on those things, but you don’t really know until they’re in the situation, how somebody is going to respond. So, I try to hire people that just have a really calm energy, because the worst thing to do in those moments is freak out. The dogs are going to pick up on that energy, and it’s going to escalate the situation. The emergency vet addresses and phone numbers [from pet parents] for emergency situations should always be in the contract.

From a mental health perspective, how do you think being around animals all day people?

I mean, animal therapy is definitely real. You know, when [COVID] hit, the shelters cleaned out, which was incredible. So many people adopted, and I think it was really life-saving for people, especially during those dark times. My business, of course, was completely dead during the pandemic. But once people were going back to work, we were slammed because everybody had adopted animals.

Why didn’t you get an animal while you were a touring musician?

Honestly, I didn't want to make that commitment when I didn’t have the time or the energy — and I physically wasn’t around enough to take care of an animal. That’s really important. I think if you have a partner or somebody living at home; it can be different. But it wasn’t the best fit for somebody like me without anybody at home to take care of pets. I always had cats, because they were just easy-breezy, but I really wanted a dog of my own.

Once I knew that I was going to be home and settled, I started that process of looking for my little soul mate, which I ended up finding through a rescue called Pups Without Borders. They rescue a lot of dogs in Mexico and bring them up to California. I wanted a Shepherd mix because I had always had Shepherds growing up. 

Are you a go-to for your musician friends when they go on tour?

We do servicing for a lot of people in the music industry. I have so many clients in the film industry, too. One time I had a client who was a producer for Ellen DeGeneres, and they were doing a bit about a dog — Ellen’s dog-obsessed. But anyway, my client’s dog was going to be part of the segment, so she hired us to be the handlers on the show.