When The Clock Starts

When The Clock Starts

For our service–In-Home Visits–the duration of each visit lasts anywhere from 30 – 45 minutes.  When does the clock start?  The minute we enter the door.

Our timing method might not be the same as some other pet sitters who charge for their time to the visit, as well as, time back to their respective “home base”.  However, our particular 30 – 45 minute visit time is completely allotted to the animals that we’re servicing and is on-site time 🙂

Pet sitters aren’t all the same on how they arrive at their charges, their timing methodology and so forth.  It’s neither good nor bad…some of us are just different from others.

When interviewing pet sitters, and if you’re wondering whether or not the entire visit time is completely on-site time, simply ask them.   Don’t be afraid to.

Type of Request We Couldn’t Accommodate

We are busy customizing pet sitting plans for owners all of the time but sometimes, based on the client’s stated request, there comes the request that we just cannot fill.  On this note, we occasionally get asked what type of jobs or requests we haven’t been able to meet so we thought we would pass the following example along for information only purposes.

Okay, we get several types of requests for pet care who have specific needs that need to be met.  More often than not, we can help the owners 🙂  There are some situations, however, where we believe we cannot help them.  An example of that would be as follows (names removed of course because this post isn’t intended to belittle anyone in any shape or form):

The owner wrote us, “My cat will need a vet visit to get a fresh bandage on his surface wound on his leg, as well as 3 home care visits (with pill meds) over the week I’m gone. He wears a cone so he doesn’t try to get at his leg, but is able to eat and drink with it on, when bowls are filled. The vet is less than 1 mile from my house in [left blank].”

We declined this job for the following reasons:

“…For us to pet sit him would require much more than three visits a week but rather two visits per day to ensure the following:
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  • The cone is staying on
  • His wound isn’t getting any worse
  • The food and water dishes remain at capacity

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…I hope this information helps you.  This email might not be what you’re expecting to receive (where we’re advocating using another service rather than our own) and though we’re a business with a goal to make money, our core focus is the welfare of pets for theirs’ and their owners’ sakes 🙂

We would love the opportunity to pet sit for you and your kitty in the near future, however, and look forward to the honor of doing so.

If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to help you.  Please don’t hesitate to contact me!”

The above is just an example of a time where we’ve had to turn down a job because we felt that our services weren’t in the best interest of the pet  as defined by the owner’s request.  What was our suggestion you may ask?  We suggested boarding the cat at the veterinary clinic.  Why?  We felt that it would’ve been cheaper for the owner to board the cat where the cat could be monitored by the veterinarian/staff as opposed to paying our rate of $35.00 per day, for a minimum of two visits per day, in conjunction with the $30.00 Vet Visit charge for taking their cat to its appointment.  Since this was an expected budgetary concern for this pet owner, they didn’t get back with us wanting us to perform the visits at a minimum of two per day with one visit on their day of departure (if they left in the morning) and one on their day of return (if they returned in the evening).

Bottom line:   We deeply care about our clients and their pets all the way from the pet’s personal care to the budgetary concerns of the owners.  Consequently, there are those times where we feel that we cannot meet those specific needs such as in the above example.

“Facility” Check No-Shows

A question we often get is, “Can we come by to see your facility?”  Our answer is always “of course!”

One thing that we wanted to pointed out–just so that everyone knows where we stand on our scheduling policies–is this:  A repeat no-show is most likely an automatic “no” to servicing the person’s pet.  Now, we’re talking about someone who makes an appointment, for a second time, to come and meet us in order to see our home for the purpose of assessing whether or not they would like their dog to stay with us.  If both of their scheduled appointments weren’t kept combined with no contact from the person that they needed to reschedule, cancel, etc., we automatically deny them service (unless of course they had a legitimate reason for not being able to contact us such as a family emergency or something of that nature–both times).

Why are we so critical about this even though this isn’t a common occurrence?  Well, there are three reasons:
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  • It’s been our experience that if someone (again, we’re referring to people who don’t show up without the courtesy of contacting us) is that absent-minded (some would also say “disrespectful”), they also were not exactly truthful with other things regarding their pet’s info that they should’ve been;
  • Secondly, we go out of our way–always–for our friends/clients and even potential clients.  Oftentimes, we really stretch ourselves scheduling an appointment to meet peoples schedule needs as best as possible.  In this situation, it’s our efforts that get ignored.  Do we think people do this intentionally?  No 🙂  It does get a little too frustrating though if someone does this twice in a row 😉  Think of the cliche’:  “Fool me once, shame on them.  Fool me twice, shame on me”.
  • Lastly, because Jessie needs to personally be there to answer specific questions–and because more often than not people want to meet her directly–she goes out of her way to make herself available for these particular appointments.

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Some of you will wonder if we deny people a lot and the answer is “no”.  Again, this scenario rarely unfolds but has happened enough in the past eight years that we thought we would let you know where we stand on the issue 🙂

Dog-Friendly Accommodations a Click Away!

We have many friends who travel to the Tahoe area and though we’re very familiar with that area (because we used to live in Truckee), we thought we would pass along a handy website to bookmark that was designed to help pet-lovers find pet-friendly accommodations there, as well as, anywhere they may be traveling.

This website comes complete with so much more than just pet-friendly hotel accommodations; it also shells out information pertaining to local pet-friendly dining areas, dog parks, local (per region you’re checking) recreational activities, attractions, events and so much more!

If you’re planning on taking your fur-kids with you on vacation and need a great website that will help you organize and plan your trip, check out dog-friendly.com.

January’s Funnies

All of these years later since the birth of KYPSAH, we are still having a blast taking pictures of fur-kids 🙂 We hope that you enjoy a few shots we took in January.

Look for the funnies to come each month…a little something new that we’re doing to help you find laughter in your day, as well as, having the opportunity to share in a few laughs with us (because we do laugh at loud at all of our foster fur-kids!).