Sniffspot app for renting out back yards for pets takes off on Long Island

LONG ISLAND (WABC) — With the prices of just about everything going up these days, many people are turning to side hustles to help bridge the gaps between paychecks.

There's one that has really taken off on Long Island, and all you need is a back yard and a love for dogs.

David Adams started Sniffspot in 2018 — an app that allows homeowners to rent out their back yards by the hour to give pet owners' dogs their own secluded space to run around.

“It wasn't the original vision. Like I said I just put a site where people could share their yard and I pretty quickly realized that the big value proposition for people is safe exercise for their dogs,” Adams said.

For Joyanna Sora and her two dogs, Donner and Daisy, space is everything in Centereach.

“I actually had both of them, it was kind of small. I didn't like dog parks because they kind of have a pack mentality,” says Sora. “They would get kind of aggressive on the leash and kind of protect each other so I looked up ways that I could exercise my dogs.”

Then living in an apartment in Colorado, she came across Sniffspot.

“I did it a couple of times, I tried to do kind of interesting ones so in Colorado, there's beautiful views,” Sora said. “There's fenced, unfenced so I just tried to experiment with everything.”

After moving back to her mother's house on Long Island, Sora, who works from home, became a host, now joining more than 15,000 Sniffspot hosts nationwide, including about 130 on Long Island.

“Now that I'm here, I feel like this would be super nice for other people because there are tons of apartments on Long Island so I just wanted to do my best to contribute,” she said.

Sora keeps her two dogs inside before other dogs arrive to use her yard.

“It's nice. It's like a passive income. You can make a lot of money if you have the right spot, if you put into it, you really get what you put into it,” Sora said.

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