"What was happening was that I couldn't get to all of them during my
lunch break. Sometimes in the morning, it was taking me too long to get
through them and I didn't want to be late for my job. So what I started to
do was I hired a retired old guy who used to come in the middle of the day
and come take my dog for my jobs - going before work and after work."
Dave then moved down to New Jersey, working in the county park system for
the next three years while doing Geese Police on the side. He then had three
employees. During this time, the business has been operating without a
formal legal structure.
Until someone asked him for insurance.
"I was doing a job at that time for Bell Telephones and someone
asked me for an insurance certificate. I said, "Why do I need
insurance? I've got a dog; I run around your yard."
David realized that he needed to establish the legal entity of his
business and all the attendant requirements including insurance, if he wants
to continue tapping big companies as his clientele.
"That's when it all became a little bit more serious and it became
The Geese Police, the company. After several years, I just went from Geese
Police the company to Geese Police Incorporated on the advice of lawyers and
accountants. Things started picking up, and they advised me that I should
really incorporate. So it changed into a corporation."
Fourteen years after, Geese Police has remained at the forefront of the
industry that it pioneered. David proudly announces, "Right now, we
have 27 trucks on the road. We own 32 dogs. We service throughout the state
of New Jersey and parts of New York -- and that's just for my main office
here. We also have franchise offices now in Chicago, Virginia and Maryland,
and an affiliated office in Seattle, Washington."
Dogs
vs. Geese
David's success in the business is the result of his extensive research
and knowledge on animal behavior. As David explains, "You have to know
the entire nesting behavior of geese. You have to be an animal behaviorist
because you have to know those geese; and you also have to know your
dog."
Not every dog can be slated for the work of herding geese: only border
collies can be successful in doing this. Border collies use a wolf-like
glance called "the eye" that they use to induce the geese to fly.
David
puts it this way: "Any dog can chase geese. You and I can chase geese.
We run across the field behind the geese and they would get up and fly away.
If we jump in the lake and swim after them, they would get up and fly away.
Only because you and I are annoying to them. Same as a poodle."
"Border collies, by using that wolf-like glance called the
"eye" -- they're not barking, they're not carrying on, but they
are literally threatening the geese. And in the geese's little minds, a
border collie is a natural predator. They think they're gonna be eaten so
they fly away to somewhere safe. They're counting them as a wolf, a coyote
or as an Arctic fox. So literally what you are dealing with every single day
is predatory-prey instinct."
Like some seasonal businesses, Geese Police follows the nesting behavior
and patterns of geese. While it is a year-round job, summer is normally a
slow time.
"In the month of June, all the adults go into a molting stage, and
the babies born in spring are too young to fly. So anything you have on the
ground in June and July, you're stuck with unless you can walk them
someplace else. The only way they can leave is if they walk out because none
of the birds are flying. From February to May, they're setting nests and
they become very aggressive; they're laying eggs and then you have the
babies - it is difficult and time consuming."
"Geese have what you call "imprinting" - once they imprint
on a property, they will return to breed and their young will return to
breed on that property. They are very resilient about giving up what they
think is their home. So you really have to work hard in the springtime to
encourage them to go nest someplace else to break their imprinting."
Preparing
the Dogs for Duty
David attributes the success of Geese Police to the quality of his dogs.
"We have the best trained dogs. There's no doubt about that."
Even compared to other businesses that use border collies for geese,
David remarks that "I am extremely confident knowing that our dogs are
gonna knock your socks off. When you see the way our dogs work, or handled,
or the way our trainers are trained, and our dogs are trained, there's
nobody who could hold a candle to us. The best trainers in the country are
at Geese Police Academy, nobody else train them like we do and take the time
to train them."
In addition, Geese Police dogs are constantly being retrained. "You
cannot just train a dog and think that he's gonna stay that trained without
maintaining that training level."
As
a result, "The dog never freelances. They do not chase or herd geese
until they are asked to. Our dogs are completely remote controlled - they
only move clockwise or counter clockwise; they speed up, they slow down. You
can put them on the geese or you can take them off the geese when they are
asked to do so. They are waiting for you to tell them what to do - whether
to move forward, to go right or left."
To achieve this level, a dog has to be trained extensively before it
joins the Geese Police duty. "It takes about 14 to 16 months of
training to get them through a program before they ever come to work for
Geese Police. So the dogs are between 2 to 5 years old when they come to
work for Geese Police."
For the first 12 or 14 months of a dog's life, "all we do is to
socialize the dog. The dog knows to stay down, or come when it is called.
Just manners; let them be a dog." Dogs are not stock trained until
their first year, when they are deemed old enough to handle the stock
pressure.
When the dogs are ready, they are first trained on sheep. As David
claims, "Every one of my border collies are open-class sheep trained or
better. They need to compete and trained to the level of the
open-class."
After working with sheep, the dogs then graduate to working with Indian
runner ducks or domestic geese. "We take them to a pond and work with
them. Then we eventually put them on actual geese. It is kind of funny the
first time ever a stock flies away from them: since the dogs are not used to
that, they have this funny look on their faces."
The dogs are also trained not to hurt the geese. "If a dog comes
upon an injured goose or a goose that cannot fly for any reason, the next
thing the dog will do is they will get behind and he or she will start
herding it to my feet (the handler). The minute we see a bird not lifting
off, we just call the dog off and bring them back."
Since David is working with animals, what does animal protection groups
think of Geese Police? "PETA actually recommends us all over the
country. The United States Humane Society is one of our big advocates; they
call us in all the time. They are always recommending us and we do talks
with them. Last year, we did a talk at Geese Peace down in
Virginia/Maryland. We regularly run into them in all these conventions and
meetings and goose symposiums. So they know us and they actually recommend
us."
Advice to Other Entrepreneurs
When asked what advice he can share to other budding entrepreneurs, David
said, "You better like what it is you're doing. If you're not having
fun anymore and you don't enjoy it, don't do it. Because I am still having
as much fun today as the day that I started."
"And talking about growing pains -you may think that you're the
boss; that you own this little business and can do anything you want with
it, right? No you can't. You have the labor board, you have the rules and
regulations."
"When you go from a small company to a larger sized business, you
can do one of two things: you can duck your head and stay as a small little
company; or you can just come out of it and swing it. Every time there will
be somebody who will tell you, "No you can't do this. No you can't do
that." Just developing a handbook when you have a so many employees,
and you go, "Oh-hoh, we better have the regulations; we better have the
handbook. We got to watch certain precedents." When you want to give a
guy a little bonus, you better be careful on how you do it because you might
be setting some precedents. There are so many things that it starts to get
out of your hands; that you just can't make those decisions that I did years
ago."
"So you have those growing pains going from a small, tiny
mom-and-pop business going to the next level. There's some speedbumps you're
going to have. And it's time and money. You got to spend to get to the next
level. It's just unbelievable."
His outlook for the next five years? "I would like to have ten more
franchise offices."
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