Turning down bookings and saying no

This is the part of the business that I don’t like. I’m not a confrontational person. I hate saying no. I hate to see the money go, especially when it seems like such a great opportunity. Recently I’ve had to turn so many bookings for different reasons. A lot of bookings seemed to overlap. A lot of people spring breaks overlap and I’ve lost so many bookings. Also, so many people want Mother’s Day so I’ve had to turn them down. I just got a request for someone who is willing to schedule around one of my bookings, but it fell during my finals week. It sucks. It’s so hard to say no to a booking especially when the client and the pets seem so great. But I can’t have anything happen during finals week. If the dog got sick or if the pet ran out or got hurt or if I’m far away and there’s extra traffic. It just sucks having to turn down good bookings. I don’t think it’s something I’ll ever get used to. I also had to turn down some drop ins because I thought I could make it work but then looking at my schedule realizing I have zero room for error and that’s not fair to pets. Ugh. It’s not even like my schedule is that full? It just seems like the request that I’ve been getting lately are just the dates that I cannot do. Honestly I’m just bummed and I also feel bad for saying no especially cause some of these people seem to tried to adjust their schedule to work with mine and it’s still didn’t work. Out of like the past eight request, I’ve had to turn them all down.