Do you use a professional petsitter?

[hamster]

A professional is defined as a boarding place, somebody licensed and bonded, or had a dedicated business related to petsitting (as in recognized by the IRS).

A no would mean the neighborhood kid, a friend, a coworker, and even the random person on craigslist who "has grown up around animals my whole life."

[v]

Ours is a vet tech from our vet who catsits on the side. I have no idea whether it is a "dedicated business" as recognized by the IRS, but we're certainly not his only client.

So no? Yes?  No idea.  I mean, he isn't licensed and bonded for petsitting, but he does have training and a license related to taking care of pets.

[orangeblossom]

We use two options. On occasion, we take him to the boarding place he's gone to, since he was a puppy. Generally, he stays with his dog walker. They do pick up and drop off. It's great.

It is a licensed service.

[Marmee]

Depends...when it's just us out of town then in the past no, one of our siblings or parents have pets sat for us. When we vacation with extended family (like this summer we were gone 2wks) we do hire a professional (or board them). My neighbor (who is a good friend) has offered & we have teens on our block we know well but I just rather not. It is incredibly pricey though.

[polarbearfans]

Ours is a professional. I really think our cats love him more than us. We we're gone over a week, and when came home the reaction was "oh. hey. you still live here? Ok bye". They are always so calm when we get back. They spend the next few days waiting for their pet sitter lol

He sends pics and videos, logs all visits and comments, and cleans up. My home is always cleaner than we left it lol

If we don't call to say we are home, he will keep coming just in case something bad happened.

[schrodinger]

We've occasionally used a neighborhood kid if we're gone for a day or so, but the majority of the time we use a boarding service. My dog can be dog-aggressive around certain types of dogs, so I need someone that knows what they are doing and is fully licensed/insured.

[thatgirl2478]

Both.

For the dog, if we're going to be gone for multiple days and not to a dog friendly place, we go to the kennel we got him from.  If we're just going to my parents house, he comes along.
If we're going to be out for more than 10 hrs, we ask the neighbor to let him out in the back yard.

The last time we were out of town for a long time (10days) we were home in between so we didn't even worry about the cats, but our contractor was there fixing our bathroom and he was more than willing to put out fresh water & food for them.

[oreos]

We use a professional, but DH and I are fairly new in our city and don't really have any friends/family/etc nearby. If my our DH's parents or siblings were close, we'd use them.

[Deleted]

No. This is partly because I prefer a dog sitter spends the night, and most professional services I've seen are of the "stop by a few times a day" variety. One of my dogs is fairly anxious and came from a shelter, so I have always avoided boarding him because I feel like it would freak him out (what if he thinks we gave him back???).

Typically I have a friend do it, but I have hired someone off of CL in the past. I've never had any issues.

[hbomdiggity]

Yes. She is licensed and does it out of her house.

Her H is usually not involved in the business but since he is a friend of DH the pup gets special treatment.

My dog is a bit high maintenance and I'm just not comfortable leaving him with just anyone.

[audette]

There's no special snowflake option for those of us without pets!


I mean, the teddy bears can get up to some mischief when we're not looking, but they usually don't need someone putting out food for them.

[spunkarella]

We use a family company that is licensed, bonded, and insured. They do limited pet sitting in their home, and their college student son comes to visit our kitties at our house.

We all love him. Our cats typically do not take to strangers, but the sitter sent us pics of our two boys cuddling with him on the couch while we were away.

When we get home, our cats are always very calm and seem to barely notice that we were gone.

It's going to be a sad day when he graduates college and leaves us.

[h]

We generally use parents or siblings, none of whom are professional dog sitters. I also let my family watch my kids, and none of them are child care professionals, either.

If we don't have family willing to watch our dog while we are out of town, we board him at a doggy day care/pet boarding place. If he wasn't so unpredictable around new people and we knew a family friend or neighbor who wanted the job, I would not hesitate to use them, though.

Our nanny, who watches DS3 in our home two days a week, does let the dog in and out and walk him occasionally, so I guess in that respect we do have someone who at least partially cares for him on a regular basis. She is not licensed and bonded to provide childcare, pet sitting, or housekeeping services, yet she provides us with all three, to varying degrees. I am still able sleep to at night.

[Susie]

"It depends"?

When we go away for a weekend, we have friends who we swap dog sitting with. We've done them favors, they've done us favors. We have a couple friends that we have that kind of swap going with. So for those occasions, no.

But when we go away for > a weekend, we board at a kennel. So yes.  

Unless we go for a couple weeks and fly out of PHL, EWR, or BWI, in which case they visit their "grandpeople."  So no again there.  We try to do that for international vacations and stuff like that.

[L]

We board her at a professional boarding facility and choose the "no playtime with other dogs option" because I don't trust other dogs not to hurt Doggy L. If we'll be gone for more than a long weekend, we'd make arrangements to take her to Ohio to stay with my parents.

[LoveTrains]

I use my professional dog walker. My dog goes and stays at her house for the entire time that I am gone. He goes on walks with the other dogs, sleeps in her bed, etc. My dog loves it and I love that he is in a home and sleeping in a bed with people. I think my dog's heart would break if left in a kennel overnight. He is very sensitive and has special needs (blind, sickly, etc).

[RandZB]

Special snowflake: if we are gone one or two nights I get our babysitter to come over and feed/water/play/let them in at night. For longer than two nights or over holidays I take them to a fancy schmancy boarding facility. I have two 11-year old 70-pound dogs.

[nessness]

I have had friends watch them, but most often we board our dogs at their vet. It is relatively inexpensive (less than most boarding places), and they seem to love it. We have three young energetic dogs, so asking a friend to watch them seems like a big imposition.

[h]

I let unlicensed, unbonded teenagers and 20-somethings watch my three kids on the regular--as does pretty much everyone I know. Yet over half the board wouldn't even leave a pet in that situation? I have to think this is yet another situation in which MM doesn't necessarily line up with reality. Is everyone here exclusively leaving their kids with licensed and bonded babysitting services as well? I am tempted to do another poll, but I don't want to be all @-ish and cross the MM/MMM boundary...

[screwedup]

My husband is a veterinarian so INCREDIBLY picky about who watches our animals. The usual routine is our 2 year old dog is boarded at daycare, our cat in renal failure goes to the vet to be boarded and a professional petsitter that we've used for about 5 years watches the other cats. However, even before I met my husband and had only dogs, I would only use licensed, bonded, professional petsitters. Too many things could happen and I don't trust anyone but my best friend with my dogs and she lives too far away to watch them in my home.

[Deleted]

I've done both, but have a professional sitter now. My guys love her. She leaves report cards and sends me texts and pics of them. I swear my guys don't even miss me anymore and they are looking for her.

[Deleted]

No to a professional/boarding service. This is one of the benefits of working with college students--I get a chance to really know them and can hire the ones I trust to feed/watch the chickens. Miso always stays at grandma's

[aliciar6]

We pay our neighbor's daughter to come take care of our pets while we are away. She spoils the dogs and many times they take them down to their house.

[carfar]

Both. Boarding sometimes, sometimes a friend/neighbor, or my parents . If I knew an older teen/twenty something I trusted, I'd probably consider them watching my pets.

[protozoa]

Usually our dog stays at a friends house, and we watch our friends' dogs when we go away. (There are three couples and we all watch each others' dogs). If just a night we'll ask our friends who live one street over to pop in and walk him (one of whom happens to be a professional dog trainer but does this a a friend favor). If the above options fail, he will go to Camp Bow Wow.

[keweenawlove]

We have a man we found through care.com. He checks on our dog 3 times a day and has been excellent. I doubt he's bonded and insured but has always been super professional. We prefer this to a kennel so much. We've tried several and our dog (shelter dog) hates them.

I'm curious for people who would only use someone licensed and bonded and have kids - are you the same way with babysitters for your kids? I know we're talking longer periods of time that you're away from your house with pet sitters but I'm curious.

[Deleted]

Nope, one of my dogs has a neurological autoimmune disorder and we can no longer vaccinate him. So we can't board him anywhere that requires it.

We trade dogsitting with friends we met through our greyhound rescue. Our dogs love going to their house and theirs loves coming to ours. It works great for us and I love knowing they're getting tons of cuddles and attention while we're away.

[Deleted]

We've only ever used friends or family. They could easily trash our place if it turned out that's what they wanted to do some weekend. It would be pretty fucking weird, but it's within the realm of possibility.

[So_Fetch]

Yes. When Daisy was a puppy we took her to a place for daycare twice a week just so she could be socialized. Then when we got Meatie they went less frequently. They also do boarding and since the dogs know where they are going and they love the people, it makes it much easier for us to leave town and not worry about them.

[savan]

Yes. We have used the same one for years. Honestly, the licensed and bonded didn't mean that much to me. We didn't know anyone when we first moved here so we didn't have a neighbor kid to ask. I did a google search and found a petsitter in our area that just happened to be licensed and bonded.

We now know some neighborhood kids but we've formed a relationship with our petsitter so I wouldn't think of using anyone else.