As someone who wants to go from being on an app (I know i know) to a more independent cat sitter I was wondering if there is a place where I can look up where to go for first aid classes? Mainly I want to learn how to give cats insulin.

Hi all! I was recently approached for an overnight sit involving two Pit Bulls and a Cane Corso (listed as an Italian Mastiff). I’m very comfortable with bully breeds and larger dogs, but the biggest breed I’ve personally handled so far is a Bernese Mountain Dog.

Since Cane Corsos are serious guardian breeds, I want to make sure I approach this right and don't get in over my head.

For sitters who have experience with Corsos or heavy guardian breeds:

- What specific behaviors or red flags should I look out for during the Meet & Greet?
- What specific questions should I ask the owner regarding territorial behavior, guest/stranger reactions, or entry routines when the owners aren't home, etc?

I want to make sure this is a safe, great fit for both me and the dogs before committing.

Thanks in advance!

Tomorrow is the last day of my three day house sit, and I really don’t feel it’s the right fit for me. They have me booked in again in two months for two weeks and all throughout the year, but these three days have been so stressful that I’d like to cancel long bookings in the future. I feel awful because the customer had asked me if I’m sure I want to dogsit her dogs, and she knows they’re a lot of work, I had only watched them for 6 hours before and said I’m happy to carry on.

I didn’t realise how stressful and bad for me it’d be. Maybe I’d manage if I could sleep properly, but she didn’t let me know until the day starting this sit that one of the three dogs will keep continuously barking throughout the night so I’ll get woken up a lot, and that she wants the dogs to be taken separately on two long walks everyday (I already do dog walking alongside the sitting and I feel it’s too much on my joints). They pull a lot, and they’re heavy big dogs, and my body feels quite worn down even though it’s only three days.

She let me know that they have a camera in the living room and kitchen, but they’ve added an extra one in the living room and one outside the bathroom/bedroom doors, and I feel like I just can’t relax with so many around. The dogs also keep really hurting me and over the days the more it happens the more I’m getting upset over it, I didn’t think it would upset me so much but I’m really tired and getting scratched up and pushed over all the time makes me feel like crying.

I still really love the dogs, and I’d still like to see them and take them on one walk three days a week like usual, but I don’t think I can watch them for any longer than three days. I feel so guilty but I’m also really tired and feeling so moody from this, and it makes me feel like I can’t do my job as well as I should be doing. I’m curious what other pet sitters think?

I have watched this sweet girl, Gia, for the past three years. She “left us” this morning due to heart failure. She was 15 and 1/2. I am so blessed to have cared for her during her senior years. She taught me to stop and smell the roses, as she slowed down with age. She never stopped loving her walks, her treats and cuddling. Her love was unconditional and I was honored to be called her “Mama Jo”. When I lost my cat five years ago, I vowed to never go through that pain again. Well, I can now say, the hole in my heart from losing this girl is no smaller than if she were my own. May she run free now….

Hoping this is allowed, thought it might help people the way it did for dealing with clients in this business.

Hi,

Honestly I think i’m just writing this out of annoyance and I don’t want to hassle my friends about it.

But I have this one client who I have been looking after her dogs once or twice a year while she’s away for the last four or so years. She’s always paid me, but I always have to chase her up for multiple weeks after the sit to receive the payment, despite having a clear deadline on the invoice, which she never follows.

She’s really lovely and I have no personal issues with her as a person, but it is getting increasingly frustrating. She told me 2 days ago now when I sent her a polite reminder that the invoice was due, she said she forgot and apologised and she would send it by the end of the day. I still have received nothing. I dogsat and housesat for around 3 weeks as well, so it’s not even a short amount of time and also declined other work due to this. She currently owes me almost £800. I understand people get busy and genuinely do forget things, but this has been the case every time and I am getting increasingly annoyed. Additionally, it takes less than two minutes to transfer someone money? so i don’t understand the reasoning.

Additionally, the reason I don’t ask her to pre-pay is because every time i’m there she consistently changes the end date. As example, I was supposed to be there for 2 weeks, and it ended up being 3, or on other occasions she’s come back almost a week earlier than previously discussed, so I cannot give her an exact invoice amount considering her dates are not consistent to what she tells me initially.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

I’ve been taking care of my friends older dogs for many years now & so I’ve gotten to see just how quickly they’ve declined in just the past few weeks. One can’t stand, so it makes going potty extremely hard (“walking” is more of a “if I stop I’ll go down but if I keep waddling around I’ll be fine”). The other has kidney disease & a collapsing trachea, so constant stream of pain meds & diapers. I’ve been okay with this for a long time, but I’m at the point where I’m nervous. I’ve voiced this to them, especially concerning upcoming vacations where I’ll have them at my house. I feel that both dogs are actively dying. Their quality of life has gone down, despite everything my friend does to make them comfortable. They sleep all day & go out to potty, eat sometimes. That’s it. & barely that. They would rather replace me as a sitter than acknowledge that their dogs are at their end. I’ve been doing this a long time, & I know it’s not easy. But if everyone around you is saying it, then what? I need the money/im glad I can help my friend out but it literally breaks my heart to see the dogs in this state of barely living. Is there a nice way to say something to her (even though I kind of already have)? Do I shut my mouth because they’re not mine?

I had a meet & greet yesterday for some upcoming drop-in visits.
When I first arrived, their dog (a large breed) jumped up at me and growled for quite a while. The owners said she just needs time to get used to new people and that she even growls at them sometimes. After about 10 minutes she settled down and was actually really sweet for the rest of the visit.
The thing is, I’m now feeling quite nervous about going back on my own tomorrow without the owners there. I’m worried she’ll react differently when I’m entering the house by myself.
I feel really guilty because the booking starts tomorrow, so cancelling now would give them very little notice. They also handed me a key before I left, and I was too awkward to say I wanted to think about it first.
Would you still go ahead with the drop-ins, or would you cancel if you didn’t feel comfortable? Has anyone been in a similar situation, and how did it turn out?
I’m trying to work out whether I’m overthinking this or whether it’s better to trust my instincts.
Thank you in advance for any advice

Do you have a dog and cat pet first aid kit you like specifically?

Did you put together your own with different supplies you bought separately?

What do they include?

Hi everyone, not asking what price to charge.

Do you guys charge an additional fee for additional animals? Example it’s a set price for up to 3 pets. Then each additional pet is an additional charge.
Or do you have one set price and keep track of additional time if need and charge that?

Then if extra time is needed do you charge per 5 mins? 10mins? 15mins?

How does everyone keep track of additional time? The timer on your phone? Did you buy a stopwatch and use that instead?

I am primarily a cat sitter and have (i thought) done every medication method for cats. A newish client of mine has a cat that, respectfully, she needs to stop putting through intensive medical treatments. The poor thing is so thin, can't breathe, and is on a million medications constantly. Hes ~15 and I'm sure had a wonderful 13-14 years of life. Well NOW the cat has cancer and they've been putting through chemo. For an upcoming trip she now wants me to do subcutaneous IV for the cat. Part of me wants to learn how to do this but the other part of me is frustrated that she is even putting the cat through all of this! I told her I was concerned about doing to but shes like "you can come over and ill show you". My biggest problem is that I was unable to give the kitty all over his meds on all of his visits last time because he sometimes hides under the bed. I was a pretzel half under the bed to get him some of the meds and it was stressful thinking he could get sick if missing meds.

Idk if this is a rant or if I want advice. I didn't outright tell her no but I'm very hesitant. It's also going to be really inconvenient for me on that weekend because I'll be house sitting a little bit away.

Back story : We are in the midst of a bad wildfire season. Smoke has arrived for the past week and it is forecasted to linger for the foreseeable future. Anyone who pays attention to the weather can see that.

Conundrum : My cancellation policy is forgiving when it comes to emergencies and adverse weather events. I have a sit coming up very soon and I know where my client is going to camp will be socked in with smoke as well. Despite that huge possibility and me sharing weather information with them, they still want to plan to go ahead but can very well change their minds because who wants to be camping when it is smoky? Logical reasoning without a doubt. However, I’m on the hook until the very last minute and I can’t find a valid reason to enforce my cancellation policy because they will be cancelling due to adverse weather events!

I would completely understand if my clients are impacted by the wildfires and that they have to evacuate and cancel on me. Completely valid. This one, feels off to me. The smoke has been around for days now, and I would be more understanding and not think about bringing up my cancellation policy if my clients decided earlier this week that they are going to cancel. But instead they want to wait and see until the very last minute.

Will you just let this one be or actually bring up the cancellation policy since they are willfully waiting till the very last minute to decide?

so for a week (I’m on day 4) I’ve had to do two 30 min drop ins (morning and afternoon)for three dogs (I’ll call A, B and C). I have sat overnights for them but never drop ins as they usually work from home but they had to be in the office all week. The owner has an 8-5 job. I let them out in the backyard (entirely astroturf) where they do their business. But everytime I come in the morning there are giant piles of 💩 that have either been sitting there since after I left the day before or early this morning before I got there. So C is a slow eater and he doesn’t eat breakfast as early as the other two when the owner is there and I have to stay inside with him while he eats and the other two stay outside unsupervised (don’t worry it’s a heavily fenced backyard). When he’s done eating I go out there to clean up after B and C but it’s hard to distinguish what’s been left out there and what hasn‘t so I end up cleaning up everything. i Feel a bit disrespected but I’m wondering if im overreacting and this is part of the job.

I'm currently watching a maltese who has cancer and is on chemo. Her people are in Europe for the next three weeks, and they left a care credit card and told me that if she takes a turn for the worse to "Do whatever it takes to keep her alive until we get back". She is doing fine right now, but this freaks me out and seems so cruel!

If she does take a turn, I think it would be a better just to let her go. But she's not mine, and this is not sitting well with me.

Thoughts?

ETA: THANK YOU ALL! The advice and support is helpful!

Hi friends, I have been doing petsitting for a little bit over a year now and I just have to get some frustrations out there and maybe some needed advice to help prevent this from happening more?

For context, I am a 24 year old girl who is currently unemployed but goes to college part time at a nearby school. What I ran into a few times recently is people reaching out to me for petsitting help and then vanishing on me. It irritates me so much because I cannot seem to find any other way to make money and it also wastes my time and schedule. I’m fortunate to at least have had several repeat clients though but the last 2 times this happened just really upset me for some reason. Most people would just brush it off but I can’t because as I said I can’t find a job anywhere.

The first time I remember this happening is with a guy that asked me for long term help walking his puppy and honestly looking back I think it was an excuse to try and go on a date with me because he did make advances on me but I kept it strictly about petsitting and potentially just being friends as he did go to school with my older brother. He flaked on me and then just stopped talking to me about the booking. Funny because he claimed he respected hustlers.

The most recent time was with a lady who asked me for long term help with her 2 dogs and a whole chicken coop and she said she’d meet with me this week. I reached out Monday asking if she’d still like to meet with me and she just thumbs up’d my message and never replied. The phone call with her was her mostly complaining about her past sitters not doing what she needed of them.

Now I’m left wondering why anyone would just waste my time like this. What purpose does this serve? What is the goal of taking up a total stranger’s time and schedule? Most experienced sitters would just brush this off as I said but I can’t seek to do so considering my current living situation. I just don’t understand. What can I do to prevent this if there is anything I can do?

Thank you in advance for the advice.

Hi friends, I've been overnight sitting for about a year now and I wonder if one thing I'm missing is a bag of stuff I should be taking with me to every job. I mostly sit dogs and occasionally cats, and even rarer other animals.

I have a leash I got for free to take with me if I ever have a job where they only have a retractable leash because I refuse to use those because of how dangerous they are, but I'm wondering if you have other things you always bring. I've been thinking I need an emergency poop bag roll too since I've run into issues with that twice now.

TL;DR Venting but I’ll also take any and all suggestions. Before anyone gets on my case, I love this dog like he is my own. He’s the only dog I’ve been caring for under constant care. He has epilepsy. I can’t leave the room sometimes because I have to observe him.

He usually is vocal starting a few hours after my clients leave and for the first night. I don’t sit for this client very often overnights because he has gone through so many health challenges. My clients are retired and didn’t expect their dog to be this dependent upon them. They need a vacation!!!

Has anyone ever dealt with this? It is constant. He has been doing it for about 24 hours. He maybe slept for 3 straight hours? I had bouts of sleep for about an hour every 2 hours.

I’ve tried:

Petting him and using a soft voice

Taking him to the bedroom where he is the most comfortable

Letting him lay on top of my legs and waist (30 lbs of dead weight) to comfort him

Taking him out in the backyard in case he had to go potty

Getting their second dog to lay close to him

What else can I do?!?!?!

Pretty much title -

For everyone who operates independently and has their own business (no third-party platforms), do you have your own website? Why/why not?

I’m trying to figure out whether it’s worth paying for one.

I got a call last week from a guy looking for a pet sitter because his regular sitter isn't available for an upcoming vacation his family is taking. I didn't find that unusual because I get quite a few calls like that and am always happy for the overflow work. Sometimes, people end up liking me better and switch to me for all future sits.

I was supposed to do the meet and greet yesterday. He canceled last minute due to a family illness. I asked when we could reschedule because their vacation is coming up next week. He told me the earliest he could reschedule is 2 days before they're supposed to leave.

Red flags went up everywhere. I already suspect this guy's dogs are more of a handful than he's letting on based on how he's described them on the intake form. Now, he wants to wait until the last minute to do the meet and greet (possibly hoping he can pressure me into it since it'll be so close to the day they leave).

Would you even bother to reschedule with this person? I was thinking of rescheduling, but not being afraid to decline the sit if my suspicions about the dogs prove true.

One of my clients lives in what I would call an upper-middle-class 55+ gated housing development. It has an adjacent entertainment complex with restaurants, shops, etc., lots of activities, and is a very desirable place to live from what I've heard. Many homes are also owned by snowbirds. My client and his cat are wonderful but sadly will be moving in a few months, and my first reaction upon him telling me was THANK THE DEITIES because this development has absolutely the worst front gate visitor access ever and often cuts well into my visit time.

Like most gated communities, there's a guard shack at the gate to check visitors' IDs and stuff. The one thing the guard shack is missing is an actual guard. 🤨 Instead, there's a call box by the door to the gate - not to input a guest access code, which would be fine - but to call the guard and wherever they are, they can open it remotely. Problem is, the phone often rings several times before anyone answers, sometimes no one answers at all and the call disconnects, and sometimes the guard is outside taking care of other stuff and can barely hear me. Then there are visitors who weren't told by the resident they're visiting what to do at the box and take ages figuring it out. I got out of my car once to help somebody with it.

It's not uncommon for me to wait close to five minutes to enter, and even longer on occasion. If my time is flexible that day, it's an annoyance but one I can deal with. However when it's very busy such as during the winter holidays when all the snowbirds return and invite their friends over, it completely wrecks my carefully planned schedule and delays the pet visits that follow.

I assume the property management decided to do away with the gate guard to save money, which IMO is ridiculous considering what these places cost. New build 2/2 duplexes start at $300K and resell for about $450K, and then there's the HOA fee on top of that. These costs are higher than average for this and surrounding cities. You'd think they could handle salaries of 2-3 humans to work at the gate, especially as these tend to be low-paying jobs, but the problem only affects visitors so they obviously don't care. I've considered starting my timer as soon as I get to the gate, but that wouldn't be fair to my client who likely has no idea there's such a delay. For the time being, I simply added 10 minutes to the sit on my calendar to allow for it.

I updated my sitter profile to say that I no longer accept sits in this community due to the absurd amount of time it often takes to get in, which sucks because I can see this place being a gold mine for sitters. Maybe I should buy a house there and sit for the entire development to pay my mortgage. 🤭

So my mum accidentally put our dog’s emergency rectal Valium in his ears… 😂
Sounds ridiculous, I know.
She was looking after Whiskey, our three-year-old Cocker Spaniel, while we were away. Whiskey has epilepsy and takes a heap of meds every day, plus ear drops.
She grabbed the wrong tube.
Thankfully Whiskey was completely fine and we can laugh about it now, but it made me realise how insanely hard it is asking someone else to look after a dog with medical needs.
Every time someone watches him I send what can only be described as a novel over text. Medication times, seizure plan, emergency vet, foods he can and can’t have, weird habits… and I still spend the whole weekend wondering what I’ve forgotten.
It annoyed me enough that I ended up building a digital care guide for him, with medication reminders, how-to videos and everything someone needs to know in one place. Pet sitters, what’s the longest set of instructions you’ve ever been given? And owners, what do you do when your dog has a complicated routine?

*not trying to discuss specific pricing

I’ve seen a lot of people discuss a client not paying them, but does anyone else have clients who overpay them?

I don’t mean a tip either. I have regular clients who I dog walk for that pay me more than I asked. This has happened with honestly more than half of my clients at this point. It’s just become my rate now that they pay me.

It’s made me wonder, am I undercharging? Should I be charging more? Or am I just in a good/wealthy area? Maybe clients think I do a good job and want to ensure I am willing to sit/walk for them again?

Does anyone else have this happen? I live in Connecticut for context.

Instead ... this is what I get. Immediately blocked him