How To Pick a Pet Sitter

I'm a little biased on this topic but I'd like to think I can give some great insight on how to select the perfect person to help take care of your home and pets.  This isn't going to be specific about our area, so feel free to share with friends across the country!  Petsitters can operate in pretty different ways so it's really important to pick the best fit for your needs.  So here's a list of things to consider when interviewing petsitters...

1. How often do you travel?  If you take the occasional vacation (oh say, two trips a year) then a sole-proprietor can work well for you.  On the other hand, if you travel often, needing to go out of town on business quite a bit, you might need a 'team' of petsitters... someone who can always be available at the drop of a hat.  Granted, it might be a different person each time and many people don't like having someone new in their home each time.  A sole-proprietor (like me) would require some more planning to schedule him or her for your needs.  We need vacation too which means when we're out of town, no one is there to watch your pet, there is no back up. 
2. What are your pet's emotional needs?  Some happy-go-lucky dogs don't mind who comes through the front door - as long as there's someone to love on them and feed them!  Some other dogs are very protective and would need an established relationship with the person coming in to take care of them.  Others can have a rough past and have a very hard time trusting people, these dogs need consistency in their lives as much as possible.  Cats can be similar.. some are very friendly and outgoing, but others will go and hide when they hear a new voice in the house.  Knowing that the same person is taking care of your pets time and time-again can be a relief.
3. Does your pet have any specialized needs?  Do they have a medical condition that could really benefit from a petsitter with veterinary experience?  Do they have severe separation anxiety and would require someone to spend the night with them in your home?  Perhaps you have a large dog that has trouble getting around, it might be best to have someone young and strong.
4. Would you need pet-taxi services frequently?  If you board your pet or have your pet groomed and would like someone to pick up and drop off your pet, they need especially reliable transportation to drive your beloved pet around town.  If your dog is large, they'll need to have an appropriate sized-car to get them around, and maybe even a ramp so they can get in/out comfortably.
5. How important is home security to you?  The absolute worst thing I see around town is a car driving around with large magnet's on the side saying "Jane Doe's Petsitting, ###-####".  This is an open invitation for someone to follow that car and find out where all the vacationing homes are.  This is my #1 professional pet peeve!
6. Does the petsitters values line-up with your own?  When someone is going to have access to your home and taking care of your furry family members, it can be very comforting to know that you and your petsitter see eye-to eye.  This largely means views on training and health.  If you firmly believe in positive reinforcement training (clicker training, treat pouch etc)  but your petsitter uses shock collars to train their dogs to sit, lay, etc. it can signal a red flag that they don't value the human-pet relationship as much as you do.
7. How important is insurance and bonding to you? While many petsitters call themselves professional, if they're not investing in their own business, how sure are they in their own services?  When a petsitters spends hundreds of dollars each year to be insured, they are protecting their client and themselves.  Insurance can pay for a house to be re-keyed if a key was lost, it can cover a pet's rattlesnake bite if it happened during the time the petsitter was taking care of them, it can even cover the cost of carpet cleaning if say a pet urinated on the carpet due to a UTI while in the petsitters care.  Also, when a petsitter is bonded, it also protects them and the client - that the client will pay the sum agreed upon and that the petsitter will render the services.  Both insurance and bonding are a must in my book.
8. How important is it that you have your petsitter for years to come?  Petsitters come and go fast and frequent.  Many people start offering petsitting thinking it will be a fun source of income, but in reality petsitting is not a job for someone needing a steady income.  It takes a while to build clientele and many do not have the luxury of being that patient.  I see it too often that they give up within months, move to a different town, or find something else that pays better.  Those of us in it for the long haul are few and far between.

There are benefits to other options like boarding or having your friends watch your pets in their homes.  Boarding would be great for very high energy dogs that need a lot of attention.  The drawback is that respiratory issues can spread like wildfire in a boarding facility even with vaccinations.  We're seeing viruses and bacteria mutate and vaccines are no longer protecting pets at 100%.  Personally, I would never EVER board my pets.  We don't travel enough and I will not have a facility dictate when I should vaccinate my animals.  I also have a very emotionally needy dog that is scared to death of new dogs.  The very sound of a dog on the TV scares her so a boarding facility is way out of the question for us.

Having friends watch your pets in their homes is my favorite option.  This is what we do - we take turns with some friends who live a few minutes away from us.  All of our dogs get along great and both of us wives are former vet techs and have very similar views in training, so we can feel completely comfortable leaving our pets with each other.  This option doesn't work so well for cats though, or if your friends have a particularly busy household.

So while it is very important that your pets and your petsitter get along, there are other factors to consider.    I do wish I could clone myself so I could help more families, but that's the downfall of working as a sole-proprietor.  I limit myself to a small number of clients, but those clients and their pets become family.  They respect that I need to go on vacation too, so I try to plan my trips months in advance and we work with each other's schedules.  When I'm in someone's home taking care of their animals maybe every other month, it is routine - unless something major has changed in the pet's care, I remember exactly how much to feed, what lights to turn on, what shades to close etc. 

In the end, a petsitter won't be perfect for everyone and that's ok!  What matters most is that you have someone you can rely on, who you are 100% comfortable with taking care of your pets, and that your pets love them!

Frozen Seafood Snack

With temperatures over 100* this week, I've been busy keeping our own pet's comfortable and making all sorts of ice cube treats, even for our new chickens!

In my earlier post, Beat the Heat, I mention how you can turn canned dog/cat food into ice cube treats.  If you don't have canned food on hand, or just want to offer your pet's a different option, here's a cheap and healthy ice cube to offer them!  Sidebar: Cats almost always suffer from renal issues later in life due to chronic dehydration so I'm always trying to sneak more water into their bodies, this is a great way to do it!

I used 1 small can of chunk light tuna and 1 can of water packed sardines.  I dumped all contents into a bowl to mix them up and mash up the sardines into flakes, then added enough water to fill an ice cube tray.  It didn't take long for them to freeze and if you need the ice cube tray again, you can keep the extra cubes in a ziplock in the freezer.  The kitties loved these for a mid-day snack and unlike the dogs, really take their time enjoying them, lick by lick =D

Beat the Heat

This post isn't going to focus on heat stroke prevention because I'm pretty sure if you've come to my blog, you probably love your pets as much as I do and would never put your pet's life in danger.  But let's be real, your pets have no business being in the car on a hot summer day while you run inside a store for a quick errand.  Additionally, we all know if your pets are kept outside, they need a significant amount of shade, TONS of water and a surface to lay on that will be out of direct sunlight.  

Even if your pets lay around in the air conditioning all day long with short potty trips outside, the heat can still be pretty rough on them and I know it zaps our dogs of energy.  So here's a list of things to help your dogs and cats beat the heat..

*Offer your pet's frozen treats.  A simple way to do this is to use canned food and make ice cubes out of it, then give it to them frozen.  I love doing this for cats since they will generally take their time, licking it while a dog would probably chew it twice and swallow.

*Frozen toys are a great option for mouthy dogs.  The Chilly Bone comes in different sizes.

*Use a fan on the floor so it will blow directly across the floor/room. Some dogs love to sit in front of fans.  I have heard you can also freeze a gallon of water in the freezer, place it in front of a fan and it will help cool that immediate area.

*You can make a big frozen treat for your cats and dogs like the Doggie Cone.  If you want to make something like this extra tasty and want to use chicken stock, please take the time to make your own stock.  It's so easy and you will be saving your pet from a huge amount of sodium and other chemicals.  If you do want to make your own stock, you can boil extra chicken (or beef parts) like bones or the parts of the chicken carcass you wouldn't use like the back bones.  You can make a significant amount, freeze it into ice cubes and later melt and reform as you'd like.  I've done this before and loved how easy it was.

*You may have freezable toys already in your home like Kong's or other stuffable toys.  One of my favorite things to do is to fill up a Kong with some healthy goodies, freeze it, then give it to the dogs frozen.  Get some of the really small kong's for cats and try it for your felines too!  Frozen Kong's help cool your pet as well as keep them busier for longer.

*Try a cooling mat from K&H.  They come in different sizes and if your dog or cat are not sure about laying on it, you can slip it under the cover of their favorite bed or put a sheet or thin blanket over it.

*Utilize a cheap baby pool to help outdoor dogs. Dogs and cats only sweat through their foot pads and through their nose (sometimes it will look like your dog has a runny nose, it's often them sweating).  Keeping their feet cool is an easy way to help them remove heat from their bodies.  In fact, when a pet comes into an animal hospital with heat stroke and their temperature is still elevated, the first thing the medical team does is saturate their feet with rubbing alcohol.  The alcohol draws heat out from their sweat glands.

*If your dog won't dip their feet in a baby pool, if they can walk in a puddle or wet concrete/ground, it will still help cool their feet down.  I often will spray down walk ways or back patios for some of the dogs I take care of, so that they can cool their feet while walking through it.

*Pretty please don't walk your dogs during the middle of the day but save their walk for after the sun goes down or at sunrise.  One thing to know is that black asphalt holds heat much more than the pale concrete so limit walks to concrete or even better, the dirt.

Please note that 14 states have statutes that prohibit leaving an animal confined in a vehicle.  In most cases, to legally break into a person's car to relieve a pet it must be an officer.  Many people are under the assumption that anyone can break a window with no legal recourse, but just so you know it's best to keep the phone numbers of the police station and animal control in your phone.

Share some fliers with your local vet's office, dog park, groomer etc for others to hand out to help prevent heat stroke due to stupid decisions. Dare I say, put some on a few windshields??

I hope some of these ideas help a few pets out there, please share with your pet loving friends!