What do you want from a pet minding service?

[condor]

What do you want from a dog walker/pet sitting service?

Trustworthy, reliable, capable and caring person looking after your pet are probably the most important factors. Anything else?

[otolith]

We have recently started using one instead of putting the cats in the cattery when we go away. I wish we'd thought of it years ago, much less stressful for them, and works out cheaper too. We want the food and water filling up, the cat litter changing as required, and someone to check that the cats are OK. Last time, they also fed our fish tanks for us, at no extra cost, and we could tell from the cat toys that they had taken time to play with the cats while they were there. They have a key, and are very flexible - we now arrange the visits by phone and leave the money for them in an envelope.

[Mobile Chicane]

Someone who looks after my cat as well as I do:

- Fresh litter tray every day
- Fresh water (there are several bowls around the house) every day
- Food to be weighed and served in a clean bowl at every meal
- Beds to be shaken and aired every day
- Daily grooming
- Play

To take in post and water plants would be nice.

[neenaw]

condor said:

What do you want from a dog walker/pet sitting service?

Trustworthy, reliable, capable and caring person looking after your pet are probably the most important factors. Anything else?

As well as all of that, I want my dogs to be happy to go there.

We've tried dog walkers/pet sitters in the past where the dogs have been trying to pull us in the other direction when we've got to the pet sitters place. the one we use now, as soon as they're near her house they virtually drag us there! They seem happy there and when they come back home.

It also helps if they don't charge a fortune, one place we were going to try worked out at just shy of £75 a night for two nights as they charged registration fees and insisted on transporting the dogs to the sitters house at accost of £17.50 each way

[Jasandjules]

neenaw said:

As well as all of that, I want my dogs to be happy to go there.

We have them live in our house.

All we want is someone who cares about animals, and is sensible.

[e320dave]

We used to use a pet sitter when I had to go out to customer sites or the office. Our dogs loved it. They used to get so excited as we got to their road.
With all the money we were forking out, the other half decided to set up herself so now my house is always full of day care and boarders. All the dogs we have come to us seem to love it here and some don't want to go home. We treat them like we treat our own and we expect ours to be treated like that when they are being looked after.
We still use our old dog sitters when go away for a weekend and would never put them in kennels.
One thing to bear in mind though is to make sure that you visit the place first before leaving your dog and see what areas the dog has access to. We did not use one of the sitters that we looked at because all the dogs were all in one small room and they didn't have much personal space. If you are going to be going away for a while (a week or so), then leave your dog with your chosen sitter overnight well before to make sure that the dog is comfortable there and make sure you are at home in case of issues. Best to find out about issues before you go away so you still have time to find someone else.
We will not take any dogs in without seeing them first, introducing them to our dogs and any other dogs we may have at the time.