"Gulliver showed me unconditional love. That's why I built Pawshare Club," says Ally Kim, the business’ co-founder.
When Ally talks about Pawshare Club, she starts with Gulliver, a former guide dog puppy who didn’t pass the final assessment to become a guide dog.
Gulliver went on to become her closest companion and the unexpected four-legged inspiration behind the business.
For someone who grew up without experiencing that kind of affection, it was life changing.
Today, Gulliver is more than a beloved pet. He's the inspiration behind Pawshare Club, a growing Australian community platform connecting pet owners who help each other with pet sitting, dog walking and playdates.
But beneath the idea lies a much deeper mission: to reduce loneliness, not only for pets but for people too.
A community built around kindness
On the surface, Pawshare Club is refreshingly straight-foward.
Members create a profile, connect with other local pet owners and arrange pet sitting, dog walking or dog playdates based on trust rather than transactions.
With Pawshare Club, there’s no paying professional pet sitters. Members help one another and earn reward points that can later be used when they need help themselves.
"It's a bit like airline reward points," Ally explains. "When you help look after someone else's pet, you earn points. Later, you can use those points when you need someone to help you."
Members who are temporarily unable to help, for example while recovering from surgery, can donate to the platform to receive additional points.
This ensures that support remains accessible without losing the community spirit.
While the technology powers the platform, Ally says Pawshare Club has never really been about pet sitting:
"It's about helping people connect," she says.
Since launching, the community has grown to more than 500 members and hosted more than 60 in-person events, where complete strangers have become friends simply because they share a love of animals.
Finding home
Originally from South Korea, Ally moved to Australia more than a decade ago.
Like many migrants, she built a solid career but found herself without the family support network many people take for granted.
"When I needed to travel, I realised I didn't really have anyone I could ask for help minding Gulliver," Ally laments.
Many of Ally’s friends were busy with young children and others had already left Australia.
As life became busier, Ally noticed something else. Many migrants adopt pets because they provide companionship when their family often lives thousands of kilometres away.
When work trips, holidays or family emergencies arise, finding someone trustworthy to care for those pets becomes another source of stress.
That isolation became the seed for Pawshare Club. "I wanted to reduce the loneliness of pets and people," Ally says.
She didn't yet realise just how personal that mission really was.
The dog who changed everything
Before Pawshare Club, Ally worked in the corporate IT world. Her job regularly required interstate travel.
Around that time, she became a foster carer for guide dog puppies through Vision Australia. Her foster dog was the lovable, black labrador Gulliver.
Whenever work required Ally to travel, other Vision Australia volunteers would happily look after him.
Nobody exchanged money, instead people simply helped one another.
"I loved the community," Ally says. "I could be away from Gulliver without feeling guilty because I knew he was with people who cared about him."
After Gulliver failed his testing to become a guide dog, Ally and her husband decided to adopt him permanently.
It was a joyful moment, but one that came with an unexpected realisation.
Once Gulliver officially became their dog and no longer a trainee guide dog, the volunteer support network disappeared and suddenly, they were on their own.
"I remember thinking, 'We don't have family here. We don't have friends nearby. What do we do now?'" Ally shares.
That question became the beginning of Pawshare Club.
Ally wanted to recreate the same generosity she had experienced as a foster volunteer, but in a way that could exist outside one organisation and grow into a nationwide community.
A much more personal mission
As Pawshare Club grew, Ally began speaking more openly about the experiences that shaped her.
Her mother developed severe mental illness following postpartum depression shortly after Ally was born. Eventually, her condition became so serious she was formally recognised as living with a disability.
Her father struggled to cope with the situation. Ally spent much of her childhood being raised by her grandparents.
"There wasn't much love in our family," she says.
Her younger brother now helps care for their mother while Ally regularly returns to South Korea to support her family.
The experience left lasting scars. Then came Gulliver and his companionship transformed not only her personal life but also the purpose behind her business.
"I left my corporate job because I wanted to build a community where no one feels alone the way I did," Ally says.
For Ally, loneliness is more than feeling isolated. She believes prolonged loneliness sits behind many of society's biggest challenges, including anxiety, depression and social disconnection.
"My business is very personal," she says.
Dogs as social connectors
What surprised Ally most wasn't that people needed help looking after their pets, it was how quickly those exchanges turned into friendships.
Members began swapping homemade food, gifts and holiday souvenirs. Some people celebrated their dogs’ birthdays together.
One family once brought an elderly parent living with dementia because spending time around dogs brought back treasured memories of the pet they could no longer care for.
A regular attendee uses a wheelchair and told Ally the events gave her an opportunity to socialise in ways she often couldn't elsewhere.
"Dogs become the connector," Ally says. "They give people a reason to meet."
That's exactly what she had hoped for, especially for people who cannot have a pet full time of their own. They are still welcome to join the club.
Solving two problems at once
The longer Ally worked with members, the more she realised Pawshare Club was solving two challenges simultaneously.
The first was reducing loneliness. The second was helping keep pets in loving homes.
One of the reasons people surrender pets is that life doesn't always go to plan. Work trips, illness, family emergencies and rising costs can all make pet ownership harder. Paid boarding/pet sitting can cost thousands of dollars for extended absences, while veterinary bills can quickly stack up.
For many owners, having a trusted community to lean on can make the difference between keeping a beloved pet and giving them up.
By helping neighbours support one another, Ally believes more pets can remain with the families who love them.
"It's tackling two problems," she says. "People's loneliness and pet surrender."
That broader social impact has shaped Pawshare Club into a social enterprise where every new member makes the network stronger for everyone else.
The power of community
As a solo founder, Ally admits building a startup can be isolating. However, much of that changed after joining Stone & Chalk.
On her second day after joining, another founder overheard Ally talking about Pawshare Club. That conversation led to a partnership and sponsorship for one of her community events.
Since then, she's found mentors, collaborators and fellow founders willing to share advice.
"I finally feel like I belong," Ally beams. "It's been one of the best things that's happened to me this year."
She says building relationships face-to-face creates trust that simply can't happen through emails or LinkedIn messages.
Expanding the pack
Ally hopes Pawshare Club eventually reaches communities right across Australia and perhaps well beyond.
Already she's hearing from people overseas who want to build similar communities in their own countries.
For now, though, she's focused on growing partnerships with organisations that share her vision.
She welcomes conversations with community groups, councils, charities and purpose-led organisations interested in exploring how they might work together.
Bring them home
While Pawshare Club began with pet sitting, Ally believes its greatest impact lies elsewhere.
For every new friendship, every shared dog walk, every family that avoids surrendering a beloved pet and every person who feels just a little less alone.
It all traces back to one failed guide dog who succeeded in changing a life and starting a community.
Sometimes the greatest guides don't wear harnesses, they simply show us what's possible.
