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Originally Posted by YorkieRose I was a pet sitter for many years. Get a reference, ask to speak to other clients. My daughter now uses one in MD and she is wonderful. They are professionals, licence and bonded. The reason I do not like vet boarding is the dog is confined in a pen..they are stressed not being in their home, they are exposed to all the air-borne virsuses and are a part of a large group of dogs..too many illnesses come right from the vets office...if my vet calls me and tells me to stay home on a day I have an appointment because of an intestinal bug or some other virus in the clinic that day... then you know it can be a problem whether the vet admits it or not. |
Yorkierose is aboslutly right! I also worked as a pet sitter in college and as a vet-tech before college. The dogs at the animal hospital stayed in crates all day long with only brief periods of time in the runs while we cleaned cages.Because we were so focused on the sick animals, I can't say that the dogs who were being boarded got a lot of attention. I remember one Old English Sheepdog that was boarded at the hospital for a month while the family was overseas. He dropped 15 pounds while he was there and had to be shaved down because his coat got completely matted. Furthermore, like Yorkierose says, the vet's office is a great place for a pup to pick up bugs and dogs that are boarded are therefore more stressed and ergo more susceptible . Heck, where is the first place you go when your dog gets a bout of kennel Cough?
When I graduated from college, and a long time after, I still got calls from people I had sat for! It wasn't until I joined the work force myself that I learned the value of a good petsitter. My sense of it is like this - finding a good pet sitter is excatly like finding a good baby sitter with all the ups and downs and pitfalls. We had a complete fiasco finding one but I know of many others who completely adore their petsitter. The people who I worked for, to this day, treat me like family. They trusted me to stay in their homes and eat from thier frigs and sleep in thier beds because they trusted me and knew I'd care for thier fur children. If you can develop a relationship like that with your pet sitter - you've got it made.