Splitting up the Duties

Our In-Home Visit service is widely used for its benefit of keeping animals in their own homes, and on their same routine, in the absence of their owners. For long vacation trips, the money can really add up so owners typically hire us for a portion of the time and get a friend to handle the remainder of the time. This is what pet sitters call “Job-Sharing”, and quite a few petsitters will not accept these kinds of jobs because of potential problems working with the owner’s “friend”. We, at KYPSAH, have no problem job-sharing providing the following is adhered to:
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• We need to be notified upon job-hire if other people will be responsible for the caring of your pets
• We need the contact information for said people who will be caring for your pets (and they need ours) to make sure that there is no lapse in animal care when one person’s time ends and the other begins

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We’ve experienced a situation recently where we hadn’t been told that a family friend would also be taking care of the pets. Hence, since we didn’t hear from the owners alerting us to their safe arrival home, an emergency drop-by visit was done, which shed the light on pets that had not been cared for since our last scheduled visit due to the family friend never having showed up–scary stuff for the poor owners, us and, of course, the pets!

Somewhat along these same lines are situations involving houseguests. Especially during the summer when owners are traveling, they lend their house out to friends who need a place to crash while they too are traveling. Houseguests are completely good with us provided you follow the criteria below:

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• Alert us upon job-hire that you will have houseguests in your absence
• Alert your houseguest that you have a petsitter taking care of your pets so they don’t inadvertently take it upon themselves to care for your pets

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You may be wondering why this is such a big deal so we’ll give you a real-life example. Your dog is on a very rigid medication regimen. You have a houseguest staying at your home but you forget to tell him/her that you have a petsitter coming by to care for your dog. So, your houseguest sees the pills and the food, for your dog, laying out on the counter. Assuming it’s their responsibility to give your dog his pills and feed him, he/she does exactly that. They give your dog his medication and food. What your guest doesn’t know is that the petsitter already came by and gave your dog his medication and food for that day. Hence, your dog has now received an overdose of his medication. Your dog received too much medication, which depending on the medication, could be an emergency trip to the veterinary hospital.

Bottom line: Make sure to inform your petsitter and your houseguest about the presence of the other. Also make sure that each of them know their responsibilities of what and what-not to do.