r/petsitters

My neighbor has been Dog sitting for a couple years, and it was mostly tolerable. However, the past year things have really gone downhill.

She will have up to 8 dogs sometimes and leave them in the yard unattended 24/7. In the horrible Florida summer. I used to see her out sitting with them, giving them attention and letting them inside at night, and when it was too hot during the day. Now they are just ignored. They bark all day and all night and occasionally I'll see someone come out and yell at them or lock them in the shed.

The house used to be quiet and respectful aside from letting a dog out two bark incessantly, but usually not for more than an hour at most. Now it seems like a dozen people have moved in and out in the past year, and different cars are there day and night. There are more visitors to this house than there are to all the neighbors in a 3 block radius combined. And it seems like the dogs are either ignored by them, or yelled at by random people. I swear I almost never see anyone play with or pet them.

I can't file an anonymous complaint where I live. They require name, address, phone etc. I filed one a while back because the dogs were waking my infant up, but nothing ever happened.

My concern is now for the dogs. But I am scared to lodge a complaint with my name and details. Some of the people coming and going, or staying temporarily, make me uncomfortable. Technically I guess the dogs aren't being abused. So I don't know if I even have anything to report, or who I would report it to if I did. I just hate seeing them all lined up at the gate all day, begging for attention and AC.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would be very grateful!

How do you guys handle jury duty? I do drop-ins/walks only and typically have 5–8+ visits per day. I got summoned for jury duty, but I already have to postpone it because of an upcoming trip, so I’m able to reschedule it for a time when I currently have no bookings.

My concern is that I don’t want to block off an entire week and decline my regulars when I may not even end up being selected for a jury.

How do you guys handle this with bookings/scheduling?

Yall, i have been pet sitting for a couple days and i promise ive been brushing everyday. EVERYDAY. and this cat has gotten a couple matts. one under her arm, and two next to her butt. i only saw this because this was my daily brush. what do i do? ive bout a matt detangler and a diffrent brush but do i tell her owner? do you think they will be upset with me? They told me they had a matting problem with another sitter as well and that they were really upset with them and got their money back so thats why ive been so diligent. is it normal for a cat to have matts produce in a day? should i try and get them out before i tell the owners?

Today, I stopped all my programming and started doing more research by going to different pet care websites, reading e-books, asking sitters I know some questions, asking my friends and family about my website, and doing research on pet care for all types of animals.

So, these are the things that I figured out:

1. I need to find good, trustworthy sitters who have prior experience in pet sitting.
2. I need to lower the price for sitters and owners for them to actually use the website.
3. I need a reason why people would use my website instead of using Google.
4. I need to build trust with sitters and owners for this website to actually start and become successful.
5. How am I going to keep my customers' information safe from hackers?

So, right now, I'm just writing ideas down in my notebook on how to fix these problems.

For trustworthy sitters, I was planning to gather more personal information from them by using a third-party website like Checkr.

To lower the price, I was planning to charge $5 once a month, and sitters can choose if they want to get paid through the website or by contacting the owner themselves.

If they decide to make the payment through the website, they have to pay the extra payment because Stripe takes about 2.8% of the payments. However, if they decide to contact each other personally and the sitter asks for the owner's personal information and the owner says yes, they can do the payments with no fee.

1. I was asked this question a lot:

Why would I use YOUR website when I can use Google or another pet sitter website?

Well, first, my website is planning to support all kinds of animals. Not only dogs and cats, but reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, etc.

When sitters submit their applications, the website asks different questions for each different type of animal, and obviously, you can select more than one type of animal too.

And I won't have this information. The third-party website will have the information with them and tell me if their profile, pet sitting experience, or license was authenticated.

Second, my website provides information about the sitter quickly and in a more summarized way than Google.

On Google, you have to go into different profiles or websites to check sitters out. But my website simplifies all of it.

It tells you their prior experience on different websites, certificates they have in pet sitting, and their reviews on different websites.

I'm still finding more reasons why people will use my website instead of Google.

And for building trust with sitters and owners, I really can't do anything about this, and I really believe building trust is a matter of time, not something you can rush.

And for the last reason, that hackers might breach your information, that's why I'm using a third-party website.

A new website like mine has less trust built with sitters and owners. But these third-party verification companies have bigger portfolios and more trust than I do.

I'm still trying to find the best third-party company that will keep information safe.

And lastly, for the legal issues, I'm still looking into it.

There are sooooo many legal things about a pet care website.

Well, that was all for today. If you have any suggestions or ideas, leave them down in the comments!

Today, I worked on researching a little bit more about pet care, and I’m planning to keep doing research for the next couple of days. Today was really all about what I needed to do to let different animals into this pet care website and what pet sitters would need.

I didn’t know that each different type of animal could need different legal requirements and different types of care. I planned to sort them out by types of animals, and this is the result:

Dogs would need questions about walking, feeding, medication, behavior, and emergency situations. Cats would need questions about feeding, litter boxes, medication, indoor or outdoor rules, and behavior. Birds would need questions about cages, feeding, handling, and experience with that specific type of bird. Reptiles and amphibians would need questions about temperature, humidity, feeding, lighting, and enclosure care. Small animals like rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, and ferrets would need questions about feeding, cages, handling, and cleaning. Fish would need questions about feeding, tanks, water conditions, and equipment. Larger or farm animals would also need their own questions based on what type of animal they are.

Basically, I realized that I can’t just ask every sitter the exact same questions because taking care of a dog is obviously different from taking care of a reptile, bird, or farm animal.

Now, as I was working on this, I also read some comments from yesterday and realized that I had to add more people into this project because you guys were really talking about hiring employees, and I realized I wouldn’t be able to manage all of the work by myself.

So, four of my friends actually decided to help me. They are some of my best friends, so they were willing to help!

Today, we actually searched up pet sitter places near me that are privately owned or small businesses, and we asked them questions if they were willing to talk to us. Me and my friends split up so we could cover more ground, and I can say that we managed to cover about 30% of the sitters near me and asked questions.

Even though most of them said they weren’t interested, some of them actually took us seriously and told us that there were some key flaws in our system when we “choose the good sitters.”

What they told me was pretty simple. You really can’t figure out if someone is a great sitter until you actually see them work and talk to them.

This really gave me a huge turn because I really thought running a lot of background checks would do the job, but I guess it doesn’t because there are still a lot of loopholes in that system.

But because I can’t talk to every sitter one by one in person, especially because who knows how far away that sitter might live, I started thinking about another option.

When they provide their phone number or another source of contact they prefer, I was planning to call or text them and talk to them for around half an hour about themselves and why they want to sign up as a sitter for this website.

We could ask about their experience, what animals they have cared for, why they want to become a sitter, and what they would do in certain situations. Then me or one of my friends could write notes about the conversation and discuss the sitter afterward.

As I went through this project, I also realized that no matter what I really do, I can’t always find good sitters who are caring. I might still make a mistake and let someone in who just wanted a side hustle to earn money.

That is something I don’t think any system can completely prevent, but I still want to make the system as good as I possibly can.

Also, by the way, when the sitters provide private information for screening, it doesn’t go directly to me. It would go to a third-party website, and they would check the sitter’s information and tell me whether the screening was approved.

At the bottom of the application, it would also be mandatory to leave a contact method that you want me or one of my friends to use to contact you. We would call or message you, talk to you about becoming a sitter, write notes, and discuss the application.

My friends and I are also planning to have a meeting every week or two to do progress reports, talk about what we worked on, what problems we found, and what we should work on next.

Even though this system isn’t perfect, I really do think this was the best system I could come up with right now, and I am still thinking of better ways to talk to sitters and figure out who would actually be good for the website.

Also, the starting payment is still being decided between $4.99 or $5.99. I’ll tell you more later when things are official and actually decided.

For now, this is what I worked on today. If you have any ideas or suggestions, leave them down below.

Thanks for reading!