More Minutes, Less Motion

Validating a Professional Dog-Walking Service's GPS-Tracked Walk-Minutes Billing Metric Against Independently Measured Canine Activity

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement fits validated accelerometer collars to 214 client dogs of a six-territory dog-walking franchise and compares 1,142 walks' company-billed GPS minutes against independently measured active-motion minutes, finding billed minutes explain almost none of the variance in measured activity (r = 0.13, r² = 1.7%). Activity yield falls monotonically with billed walk length, from 82% in the shortest-billed quartile to 34% in the longest, and is lower for walks billed by a per-minute-paid contractor than for a salaried walker on a matched-length route.

@misc{slop_k9uxse,
  author       = {Torun Ezeigwe and Joost Nwosu},
  title        = {More Minutes, Less Motion: Validating a Professional Dog-Walking Service's GPS-Tracked Walk-Minutes Billing Metric Against Independently Measured Canine Activity},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.k9uxse},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-validate-whether-a-k9uxse/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}