Only one month ago, Andy Berta considered himself a full-time dog walker. Serving the Columbia Heights neighborhood, Berta, better known as “Andy The Dog Walker,” took various pooches out and about throughout the day for long strolls or mid-day bathroom breaks.

Now, Berta finds himself cleaning houses, or riding a bike through D.C., delivering food with Caviar to collect enough money to fix himself his own dinner. Like other gig economy workers in D.C., Berta’s job has been upended by the sweeping shutdowns of the coronavirus.

With mandatory stay-at-home orders issued in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., area dog owners are now spending more time at home with their pets, and opting to take their pooches out for walks themselves—rendering dog walking and pet-care jobs like Berta’s obsolete.

“I just panicked,” says Berta, when he realized he was receiving fewer and fewer clients on a day-to-day basis around mid-March.

Some of Berta’s regular customers have continued to pay him his normal rate while they choose to walk their own dogs, but Berta says a majority have stopped using his service completely. With his sole source of income slowly dwindling, Berta turned to odd jobs and delivery service to make up for lost cash.

“I have to do two or three jobs now just to make sure ends meet,” says Berta. “I’m kind of just winging it.”

This means self-quarantining and social distancing isn’t a viable option now for Berta. Without a job that can be done remotely, he has no choice but go outside, potentially risking his safety and that of those he comes in contact with.

“I should be quarantining like the rest of the world, but I have to get out and make a living,” Berta says.

Since the novel virus began spreading rapidly in D.C. and his client count declined, Berta has launched a GoFundMe campaign that he hopes can raise enough money for rent and other necessities, in addition to his now-sporadic income. So far, the GoFundMe has raised over 1,000 from dog owners and past clients.

“Columbia Heights is an awesome place and a community that has really embraced me,” Berta says. “I didn’t think people would really even care [about the GoFundMe], but [the donations] made me feel more like a real person instead of just their employee.”

Like Berta, other dog-walking and pet-boarding businesses around the area are facing economic uncertainty in the face of the coronavirus. Kim Reed, the owner of Patriotic Pet Care in the Palisades, began seeing a decline in client needs around March 16, as several of her customers transitioned to working remotely. Reed continued to offer walking services with increased safety and cleanliness precautions, but says that with every day, revenue trended downward.

“We were down to almost nobody,” Reed says.

Out of a concern for client and customer safety, Reed fully suspended almost all dog-walking services when Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a citywide stay-at-home order. Some staffers, who are employed through independent contracts, still conduct essential walks for two elderly clients who cannot physically walk their dogs, but all other nonessential walks have been cancelled.

“It was very heartbreaking, but I had to send an email to the clients saying ‘We’ll see you when an order is lifted but we can’t continue for the next couple weeks putting the public in jeopardy or our staff in jeopardy,'” Reed says. “That was probably the hardest decision I had to make, pause the walks that were trying to keep us afloat.”

Since the coronavirus outbreak hit the region in full force in mid-March, Patriotic Pet Care has lost $15,000 in revenue, which is mostly generated through its dog walking services. Reed has applied for the city’s small business microgrant through its emergency relief bill and an SBA emergency disaster loan, and is currently awaiting approval.

Because Patriotic Pet Care works through independent contracts, staff members are eligible to file for unemployment until operations at Patriotic Pet Care reopen. But as more people adjust to working from home, Reed she fears that even after the pandemic subsides, the teleworking trend will continue, making recovery from the economic devastation even more difficult for her staff.

“The hardest part for me as a business owner was telling these people, ‘You’re not going to be coming back for a few weeks, even then we don’t know what business will be like,'” Reed says. “I’m expecting a major increase in telework after this now that they know it can work, so I’m expecting that a lot of our daily dog walk clients might be working from home two, three days a week. Not knowing about that is giving me the most anxiety.”

As some pet care businesses cease operations almost completely, others have decided to remain open amid the pandemic, despite the expected plunge in business. Jacob Hensley is keeping his doggie day-care facility, District Dogs, open, as it’s considered an essential business per Mayor Bowser’s stay-at-home order, but has had to furlough 30 of his 40 employees after business dropped 80 percent in March.

Nearly all walking services have been suspended, and both District Dog locations in Navy Yard and Park View have only been hosting 10-12 dogs a day—a sharp drop from their normal 50-70.

“It sucks for the dogs, the owners, and the staff,” Hensley says.

Hensley secured a $7,500 business emergency management grant from the city to pay rent for both District Dog locations, and is currently waiting to hear back on his microgrant application from the D.C. relief bill. Some loyal customers have continued to pay for walks even while they’re staying at home, and others have bought gift cards to support the business.

While Reed predicts that some owners will continue to stay at home with their pets in a post-coronavirus world, both Hensley and Andy The Dog Walker remain optimistic that the pet-care industry can revive itself. Out of the few dogs that have been dropped off at District Dog, Hensley says that some come from owners who are working from home, but want to mitigate any possible separation anxiety that the dogs might experience when life returns to normal.

And for Andy Berta, he says that dog walking is what he wants to do, and holds onto hope that one day he can restart his business again.

“I’m a dog walker, and I want to stick with it, so I’m just trying to keep a positive mindset, and hope that this gets better,” he says.

This story was corrected to reflect that Reed applied for an SBA loan.