The CEO of Moose & Friends Pet Sitting 🐾

Yesterday was one of those days — the kind that sneak up on you and leave a tiny, permanent dent in your heart. I went to pick up the girls from their Montessori school (a magical land where independence reigns and snacks are apparently optional), and halfway home, Gemma says, “Mommy, I have an idea. I want to open a business.”

Now, when your 4-year-old hits you with a sentence like that, you don’t even breathe. You just grip the steering wheel and pray you’re raising a mini Warren Buffett and not a future slime-influencer.

So I asked, “What kind of business?”

She looks at me—calm, confident, like she’s pitching on Shark Tank—and says, “An animal home pet-sitting business.”

She explained that people would drop off their animals for her to take care of while they went on vacation. Reasonable enough… until she started listing her clientele: cats, dogs, fish, hamsters, mooses (plural), snakes, hedgehogs, goats, and possibly a raccoon or two.

Now, this is the same child who refuses to kill a spider because “he has a mommy waiting for him.”So, of course, her business idea was rooted in compassion. And honestly, the tent she plans to build outside for “shade and rain protection” sounds far more thought-out than most startups I’ve seen.

When I asked if she was planning to charge for her services, she said, “Yes, but Baba will help me decide how much. Maybe he can pay some of it.”

Translation: my daughter just invented venture capital for toddlers.

By the time we got home, she was grinning from ear to ear—completely content with her new entrepreneurial destiny.

And I sat there, quiet for a second, realizing what had just unfolded in the back seat of my car. It wasn’t just a cute idea. It was the purest form of what I hope my kids never lose—the belief that you can do anything if it comes from a place of love. That helping others and doing what fills your heart can coexist with building something of your own.

Gemma’s idea might never turn into an actual business, but the seed she planted yesterday? That will grow. Maybe not into a pet-sitting empire, but into the kind of courage that says, “I can.”

Because that’s what life really is—a mix of big dreams and small moments that remind us what matters most. And if she can hold onto even a piece of that magic, the world will be lucky to have her.

— Gemma & Jules’s Mom 🐾✨