Ever dream about chucking your day job to live on a South Seas beach? Or become a cowboy? Or run a tiny shop in Yorkshire? Meet some brave souls who swallowed hard and took the plunge.

Starting Over

Amy Nichols, So Long, Sales, Hello Tails

When Amy Nichols, 29, worked as a sales account manager for a telecommunications company, she hated the office politics and her dress-for-success suits. These days her wardrobe runs to jeans and slobber-stained T-shirts - "Anything," she says happily, "that can't be ruined by dogs." In April 2001, Nichols gave up a hefty income to open the Happy Tails Dog Spa in Tysons Corner, Va., where for upward of $30 per day, sybaritic pooches can enjoy a bath, a pedicure and ear-cleaning, then curl up in a "nap room" with a ceiling of painted clouds.

As a kid, Nichols, "was always bringing home strays," says mom Joan, but she abandoned dreams of being a vet for a job in the then-booming telecom market. She clambered up the corporate ladder but didn't enjoy the view. "It was a really backstabbing place," she says of her last job. After a particularly nasty day at the office, Nichols - the owner of Bodhi, a collie mix, and Griffin, a Boston Terrier - found herself staring at puppies in a pet-store window. "I thought, 'Whatever happens, my dogs make me feel better,' " she recalls. "Why can't I do something with that?" She quit to start her spa a few months later, and husband Michael Schlegel, 30, signed on as her partner after he was laid off from his own telecom job. The business is barely breaking even, but Nichols says the trade-offs have been worth it. "You couldn't pay me enough to go back," she says. "I'm not just another person on the Toll Road anymore."

© People Magazine 2003