I know how hard that search can be. Over the last year, I've been watching -- and, increasingly, envying -- someone who has invented a job for herself and is obviously enjoying it immensely. So I started to wonder whether any other babblers have ever got fed up enough to say Enough! I have found my Eureka! and I'm going to make it work!

The genius job-inventer I've been watching is a dog-walker. She walks the dog of our new neighbours next door. She also walks about six other dogs at the same time. She walks them all six or seven times a day. It is utterly fascinating to watch her.

I first hear her banging open and shut the door next door at about 5.30 a.m. I last see her in the evenings, whenever dusk falls. She is in and out all day, running that amazing pack of gorgeous animals who obviously love her, adore her, would do anything for her. Most of the dogs she walks are big guys, Labs and retrievers, but there are a couple of little ones, and somehow she gets them all herding together down the street. It is both comical and beautiful to watch them.

I think her hair is naturally red, but she has it cut spiky-short and died purple on the tips. She is long and lean and looks so healthy, so sexy, so utterly in love with what she is doing every moment of every day. Gosh, but I have come to admire her.

I mean, I am self-employed, in the boring sense. She seems to me to have something more like a way of life.

And obviously, what makes her different from a lot of people who just sign on with a dog-walking agency, for contract work, is the commitment. I assume she has lunch and supper figured in there somewhere, but I swear -- she is working at least 14/7. But it is all fun!

During the winter, I watched her sitting on a lawn chair next door in the deep snow, tossing snowballs for the dogs, who were having such a good time romping about and chasing them. The two little dogs kept disappearing ... She was laughing; they were barking and waggy-tailing ...

(I am short of entertainment these days, of course ... )

My daughter always wanted to open a pet sitting service. She's been unable to do it herself but someone she knows went with it.

I mean, so many people have dogs these days, and everyone hates cleaning their yard of the poop. And, I figure the right implements and a bit of experience could make it less odious a task than what it first sounds like.

I think people would be willing to pay for such a service. I know I would have.

With all my familial obligations I'm not about to through away a steady bread on the table job right now.

But, I've thought that London, Ontario, could use a tasteful, not tacky "sex shop", along the lines of Toronto's "North Bound Leather."