If a bright yellow van packed with dogs rolled past you on a Rhode Island road last fall, you weren’t hallucinating. You’d spotted The Doggie Bus, a rideshare service built entirely for pets, dreamed up by Leslie DiManna of Smithfield.
DiManna, who also went by Filippelli-DiManna, came to the idea by way of a full life. She spent two decades in higher education and 15 years as a fundraiser, survived cancer twice, and, after retiring from teaching, decided to point her time at the thing she loved most: animals. She had the credentials at home. By her own count, the household menagerie ran to a pair of goats, a snake, a canary, a bunny, two sugar gliders, a couple of geckos, two bearded dragons, and, of course, three dogs and two cats. Caring for animals was not a hobby she was picking up so much as one she was finally clearing her schedule for.
Filling a gap nobody was serving
The concept clicked into place when DiManna noticed how many people simply had no way to get their pet where it needed to go. A working parent stuck in a late meeting. A single mom with a kid to shuttle and a dog due at the vet. An older or disabled owner without a car, or with one that had just broken down. Pet transportation, she realized, was a real need with almost no one filling it.
She moved fast. Within about a month she’d registered the business, bought and decorated the van, and stood up a website. The van itself is impossible to miss, painted school-bus yellow and covered in photos of her own dogs and her family’s, and DiManna said it sparked joy wherever it went. Drivers turned to stare, kids at red lights pointed and tugged their parents’ sleeves. The reaction, she said, was overwhelmingly warm, with people eager to know more.
How it works
Booking runs a lot like the rideshare apps people already use, only the passenger is your pet. Owners scan a QR code, printed right on the bus, or visit the website to reach a scheduling form, where they enter their address, destination, and details about their animal. DiManna reviews the request, approves the ride, and shows up at the door.
One firm rule: the bus is for pets only. She doesn’t transport people, just their animals, and she’ll take cats too, as long as they’re safely contained in a carrier, along with other kinds of pets when needed.
A one-way hop under 10 miles started at $20, with longer hauls available out to 60 miles, plus dedicated emergency-transport options. DiManna covered destinations across Rhode Island and was willing to cross into Massachusetts when a trip called for it. Owners booked her for all the ordinary reasons, a grooming appointment, a lift home from a stay at grandma’s, and the not-so-ordinary ones too.
Safety over spectacle
For all the cheerful branding, DiManna was pointed about the details that actually matter. The van can carry up to 12 pets at once, and every animal rides secured in a harness, no cages, no crates. She tailors the setup to each passenger: a booster seat for a small dog who needs the height, a bed for a large one who’d rather stretch out. The aim, she said, was to make the ride as comfortable as possible without ever trading away safety.
Underneath the novelty was a plainly stated philosophy about what we owe the animals in our care. Dogs, DiManna said, bring a calming, healing energy into our lives, and we have a duty to look after them in return, a reminder that while our pets are only part of our world, we are the whole of theirs.
The Doggie Bus arrived as part of a small but growing niche of pet-only transport services popping up around the country, the kind of idea that sounds whimsical until you’re the person with a sick dog, no car, and a vet appointment you can’t miss. Then a bright yellow bus at your curb starts to look less like a novelty and more like a lifeline.
