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Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
A professional dog walker stops and poses happily with the dog she is walking. -
"I (NB, 32 at the time) am a former vet tech (this is tangentially related to the story). At the time, I was working as one of the resident vet techs for an animal shelter, and supplemented my income with medically informed petsitting. I did this with the approval and active promotion of my boss (this story is not about her. She was awesome).
One day, my boss comes back to the medical area where I'm holed up and tells me that there is a woman up front who was asking about medical petsitting. I go up and talk with this woman (let's call her...Susan) for a minute. She tells me she has two dogs and that she's interested in an experienced petsitter with a medical background. I inform her of my experience and my rate ($100/day for one dog and an additional $50/day per additional dog). She gives me her number and address and we schedule a time to meet at her house to introduce me to the house dynamic and the dogs after confirming that for the amount of money I was charging and that I would be staying at the house while I was taking care of her dogs.
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"So I go to the house, and it's one of those cookie-cutter, new construction behemoths. I'm a big believer in never judging a book by its cover, so I ignore it. I knock on the front door and wait for several minutes. I arrived a couple of minutes early, but she kept me waiting out there until after seven, which was when we agreed to meet.
I brush this off, too. The temptation of having a little extra buffer on bills is too alluring to resist."
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Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
A woman kneels down to take a picture with her golden retriever on the sidewalk. -
Pet sitters are doing a lot more work than you could imagine, especially since a lot of these sitters are taking care of your pets as a side gig. They love ever pet they watch and they deserve better treatment and, most likely, more pay!
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“So she finally answers the door, making it seem as though I was the one who showed up late to this meeting. She introduces me to the dogs, shows me the room I'll use for when I stay over. She told me it was her adult daughter's room, and I noticed that it was still made up like a preteen's. It was over the garage and I soon learned that it was blistering hot in there in the summer and freezing in the winter, and she never once switched bedding and it wasn't on the main heating/cooling system for the house. It only had a fan in the window during the summer and barely any insulation for heating in the winter. After the tour, she explains that she will be leaving a letter on the counter every time I petsit. I agree to this. While I'm pretty good at remembering pet-related instructions, it never hurts to have a reminder. And documentation (hold on to that).”
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"I tell her that all this works, and remind her of my normal work schedule and how I can work around that to take care of her dogs. Then she starts asking her own questions. Eh. Don't mind it. I'm going to be staying in her house. Makes sense she'd want to get my vibe. She tells me she had a camera in her kitchen to keep an eye on her dogs, and am I okay with being recorded.
Sure. I don't have anything to hide, so there's nothing I'm worried about her seeing. But I do clock that the camera is not angled to watch the dogs. It's angled to watch people."
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"Well...then she asks me if I have an SO and then before I can even breathe to tell her that I'm single, she tells me that I am the only one allowed at her house and that she has had issues with parties being held while she is away. I assure her that I'm single and that my only other commitment is my cats, but I can go and check on them when I'm sure her dogs are taken care of.
Now, I never expect a client to allow me to bring my pets with me when I'm petsitting, so I wasn't expecting what came next. Before I can assure her that I live close enough to get home that it won't be an issue, she tells me, in no uncertain terms, that I am forbidden from bringing my cats into her house.
Fine. I wasn't going to, anyway."
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Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
A large dog happily gives woman his paw as she trains him. -
"Also, her dogs are not on any medications. One is a little deaf due to old age, and the other is just fat.
I end up petsitting for her for a little over two years. Nothing really spectacular happened over the majority of that time period besides one of them biting me twice because I was getting an old, broken toy out of his mouth so he wouldn't choke on the dang thing.
That is, except for one day in March 2019, when we had a spay svrgery go long because the cat coded on the table and I was a little late getting to her house to let her dogs out for their midday potty break. She calls me at work but I'm monitoring this cat post-op and can't get to the phone. I'm also not supposed to be using it at work."
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"As soon as the cat is stable and I can hand her off to the other vet tech, I'm out the door, on my way to take care of her dogs when I get another call from her. She is yelling at me that I'm not at her house right at this minute and how dare I leave her dogs in absolute squalor while I'm being lazy and don't I care about her dogs?
I let her know what happened, and said to her that I would hope that I would apply the same standard if it were her pets in distress and my own cats were otherwise okay. She is still huffy but doesn't push it further."
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As a vet, you would obviously stay for 2 years under poor working conditions because you love the animals. As a human being with experience in a poor work environment, that petsitter should have run after day one!
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"That being said, she unilaterally cuts $200 from my check for that petsitting and doesn't reach out to me for several months. I figured I'd been quiet fired and moved on. But in the fall of 2019, she calls again, asking me to stay for two weeks (which had been a pretty standard arrangement for us), but this time there's a hiccup. Her son will be staying at the house for a couple days in the middle of my stay and I won't be required to stay at the house at that time.
Okay. Not an issue. Just give me the dates and the logistics and we'll be ready to roll.
Well, she keeps changing the days he'll be in town and what days I'll be expected to be there. Finally she says that there's a three day period where he'll be there. I'll be expected to feed and walk the dogs in the morning, take them out again around noon, and I won't be back until the evening of the third day. I calculate our the cost, inform her as per usual, and on the day I start, I come in, get settled, check the fresh note to make sure nothing else has changed in the plan, and all is well with the world."
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"leave on the indicated days and come back and I think things are going pretty well. Until halfway through the second week. This woman called me and starts screaming about how I left her dogs alone for the night of the second day and morning of the third day and how I was irresponsible and that we were going to talk when she returns. My flabbers are thoroughly gasted, so I agree and finish up my scheduled days with her dogs as planned. Because I am a professional and I'm not going to abandon her dogs, no matter what kinds of little *hits they are.
A couple days after she returns, she starts blowing up my phone with texts demanding we pick a time to talk and for me call her and discuss what happened. I agree to a time and that I'll await her call.
And then I get to work."
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Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
A golden retriever dog snuggles happily with a human on a couch. -
"See, I took the note she wrote me when I left. So when she calls me to again berate me about how badly I performed and how she expected better of me and that she'll be deducting $750 from my check (which was going to be $1800), I just let her go until she needs to come up for air. Once she is done, I read off the relevant portion of her note about which days her son was going to be taking care of the dogs and when, and say that if the plans had changed, I was not informed. I let that hang in the air for a while as she spluttered and whined for a while and started to talk about how to handle this going forward.
I stop her right there. As a recovering people pleaser, I have a hard time standing up for myself, but enough is enough. I tell her that this business arrangement seems not to be working for either of us and that I think she should perhaps find another petsitter who better meets her standards. I also tell her that I will be dropping off the key at her house and that I expect my check when I get there. She blusters and reverses course so quickly I swear I can hear tires screeching, but I hold firm."
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"She finally agrees and tells me that my check will be in a plastic bag under her doormat and that she wants me to put the key into the bag when I pick it up. I pick up my check and drop off the key and text her that our business is concluded and I wish he the best.
Now, here's where I might have gotten a little petty. She still shorted my check $200, so I reached out to every single person I knew in the area who did petsitting services and warn them about her (and I had a working relationship with every vet's office in the area, as well as the freelance petsitters, so it was a lot). So, unless she hires from an exclusive service or something, her dogs are stuck going to the doggy daycare (she said she didn't like it because of their "shoddy service", but given her pocket-sized landshark's behavior, it's more likely that her precious pooches failed out of there because one of them bit another client's dog)."
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That's what you get when you mess with your petsitter!
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