4 precautions to take when arriving for a pet-sitting visit

A career in professional pet sitting or dog walking is rewarding, profitable and fun, but as with any profession, practicing basic safety tips is essential. Because your pet-sitting or dog-walking visits often require you to enter clients’ empty homes during early morning or evening hours, it’s important to always be mindful of precautions you should take when arriving at a client’s home for your pet-sitting visit.

We encourage you to take these four easy precautions when you arrive for a pet-sitting visit:

1. If an unexpected vehicle and/or person is in the client’s driveway, do not stop. Contact the client to determine if he or she is expecting anyone to be at the home. If you cannot reach the client and/or the client did not expect anyone at the home, contact local law enforcement; do not return to the home until law enforcement arrives and determines the home is safe to enter.
2. If you arrive at a client’s home and find open and/or broken windows or doors, do not enter the home. Immediately return to your vehicle, leave the premises and notify the clients and local law enforcement. Again, while your first thought is likely to be to go in and check on the pet(s), do not return to the home until law enforcement arrives and allows you to enter.
3. When you arrive at a client’s home for the pet-sitting visit, make sure you lock the doors of your vehicle. Then, once you enter the home, be sure to lock the doors behind you. This is easy to forget as your schedule is busy and your first thought is getting inside to visit the pet(s). However, locking both your vehicle and the home ensures that no one can follow you inside (or sneak in while you are busy caring for the pets) or access your vehicle while you are inside.
4. While on your pet-sitting visit, keep your keys and phone with you at all times. This ensures a) that you cannot accidentally get locked out of a client’s home and b) that you are able to have quick access to your phone in the event of an emergency. 

Before the pet-sitting assignment:

While the precautions shared above can help keep you safe when you arrive at a client’s home, preparation for a safe pet-sitting visit begins prior to accepting an assignment.

While at the initial consultation (“Meet and Greet”), do a walkthrough of the home. This will allow you to become familiar with the home and where clients keep their pet supplies, but it also gives you an opportunity to notice any potential dangers that you want to alert the pet owners to—broken locks, holes in fences (where pets could possibly escape), etc.

Always remember to follow your gut instinct. If you feel uneasy at the initial consultation or feel that this isn’t the right pet-sitting assignment for you, you do not have to accept the job. This blog post from PSI outlines how to say ‘no’ to a pet-sitting assignments.

In your discussions with clients, always ask if anyone else has access to the home and be sure to note this in the service agreement. Many pet sitters opt not to accept clients when others will have access to the home. Other pet sitters have clients that may have other service providers (housekeeper, groundskeeper, etc.) visit the home while they are away as well, but ask that clients provide information on each of these providers, including what time he or she typically arrives, what type of vehicle he or she drives, etc. 

If you do not accept pet-sitting assignments when others have access to the home, be sure to have a written policy in place and share this with clients. For example, if you arrive at a visit and find that a client’s college-aged son or daughter has returned home and is staying for the weekend, will you notify the client and discontinue service without a refund?

If your first visit will be at night, ask the client to leave inside and outside lights on so you will not enter a dark home. If you are performing multiple visits for a client each day, be sure to leave an outside light on and alternate lights inside the home prior to your evening visit so that you do not have to enter a dark home on subsequent days of the pet-sitting assignment.