Becoming a pet-sitter

LizD_2

Having had a flash of inspiration, can anyone tell me more about being a feelance pet-sitter?

What would you look for when asking someone to look after your pets (as a paid service)?

I'm sure I'll need qualifications(maybe NVQs), so any ideas would be good. At the moment, my only qualification is a love of animals (not sure about scorpions etc, though !) I'd like to look after horses as part of this, as I ride, but don't have my own nag (I'm looking at BHS qualifications for this).

Also insurance, business costs etc?

Please move if this is the wrong board, but I know there's lots of pet owners here.

hayleyc_2

Have a look here: http://www.dogsit.com/
It's the website for 'NARP'National Association of Registered Petsitters.
You need to have insurance to cover not only the animals whilst under your care but also the customers' keys and access to their home. Most good pet sitters will pay to get a police check so that people can be assured they are trustworthy. Also think about limits on the amount of dogs you'd walk at once. Eg. Many owners prefer their dogs not to be walked in huge packs but to have indivdual attention.

Kimberley

I dog sit for owners who go on holiday but i work for a company and get paid £9 per dog per day It's quite rewarding.

Justie

we always use a dog sitter but one who takes the dog into their own home rather than stays at ours. Cost is between £10 -15 a day depending on who it is and what they offer varies. Some will do extra long walks etc, some will work on training etc. Some have pets of their own and some don't. The main thing is that you need to be at home regularly or all day (depends on the dog as to what owners want). Must be able to handle the animals individual needs (dogs that pull on the lead are very common as are spoilt animals). It can curtail your own plans as most owners want your services on weekends (Bank Holidays especially). Our favourite sitter has had lots of animal experience and has her own dogs. She works full time but goes home every lunchtime to see to her own dogs so ours is never left for more than 4 hours at a time either and her and her partner take the dogs out for at least 2 walks a day and at weekends the dogs are out with them for most of the day. We like her because she's enthusiastic and obviously is good with animals. We have in the past used a local dog walking/sitting agency who were ok but not great mostly because they weren't very organised. We also use a dog walker sometimes and again we picked her because we've seen her with other dogs and like how she deals with them.

RACT

We use a pet-sitter to take care of our 2 cats wwhen we go away. The police check was important to me because I give her our house key. As far as I know she does not have any qualifications but it a member of NARP. To me this was not that important.

She also has insurance. When she came over to visit the house when I first approached her, I asked her what she would do if the little darlings got sick, etc. I also asked her where she would keep the house key (she said that it would not have a name on the keyring in case it got stolen), she also mentioned that the same person would take care of the girls (in order to build a rapport with them) - she and her husband are both pet-sitters. This was all important to me.

Our pet-sitter also takes care of the house whilst we are away - takes bins out, waters plants and garden, moves post to kitchen, opens windows etc. She is brilliant.

I introduced her to the girls and saw how she got on with them and was so lovely to them. The are both rescue cats and one of them is not very trusting of new people but I could see that they would be fine with her - this really was the deciding factor to me.

Hope this helps you in anyway

RACT

I also forgot to mention that she is very flexible. She had mentioned that she usually visits once a day when it is cats that she is takign care of but I asked if she could visit twice a day since I wanted the cat flap to be opened in the morning and shut at nighttime. So she does this. She visits for about 20mins each time so she has time to play with the girls.

She also has a number of a family friend in case she needs some advice whilst we are away and she can't get through to me.

SkintMonkey

Someone recommend a service in Dorset to my friend recently:

https://www.petsits.co.uk

The website is really good and shows what the lady offers....

sheng719

Kimberley wrote: »

I dog sit for owners who go on holiday but i work for a company and get paid £9 per dog per day It's quite rewarding.

do you have to register or are you registered to the national association of registered petsitters? I would want to be a petsitter and would like to start buy just petsitting once in a while, and earn a little bit of money from it and at the same time look after someone else's pet as I know the feeling of having a pet and not being able to go on holiday. Can I start without signing up to this NARP? I am a qualified nurse and I have been police checked as it is required when you do agency work as a nurse...would that count? It seems a lot of money to pay to NARP just to start with just one dog at a time to look after. Although in the longterm it would be beneficial....thanks!