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.
A Taste of In-Home Visits
From cats to dogs, all enjoy a good measure of love and attention. And, this is something that KYPSAH provides in BIG doses!
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.