Having breakfast with a dragon sounds a bit “Game of Thrones,” but Elise Carder has done it several times.
“I just laid her on my arm in the morning when I drank coffee and had breakfast,” Carder says.
The dragon in question isn’t a fire-breathing beast with wings. It’s a bearded dragon, a peaceful lizard about 20 inches long. Carder was pet sitting the reptile, and its owners said it needed to be let out of its terrarium occasionally so it could stretch its legs around the house.
“I was thinking, ‘How do you get a bearded dragon out from underneath the couch?'” she says.
Like several pet sitters in the Chattanooga area, Carder’s pet-sitting career began by helping out friends, relatives and neighbors for free. That was about five years ago. It eventually morphed into a professional, money-making business, a sideline to her regular work as a massage therapist.