Frequently Asked Questions
Who will be caring for my pet(s)?
Jahna and/or Paul. You will meet both of us if you decide to use our service.
Do you use employees?
No! This is the #1 red flag when hiring a pet sitter! We have a level of trust in each other that we could never have in a hired hand, and we like having a smaller, more personal service. We know all of our customers, and more importantly they know us. Turnover for pet care service employees is high, positions are part-time and the pay is low. Most employees are students or between other positions, they move on as they can and the pets don't understand why a person they've become attached to suddenly stops coming to see them. There's also petty theft, no-shows, unexpected sick days or vehicle breakdowns, mistakes and ommisions, all sorts of things that can go wrong. It's not worth it.
How long do your walks and visits last?
As long as it takes. Midday walks are aproximately 20 minutes but it varies; dogs like routines and we get to know them and what they like and try to walk them like you would, not according to the clock. We like to provide the type of service that we'd like to hire ourselves and we don't cut off visits just to get to the next one. We don't have employees to keep track of and only take on a fixed number of visits each day so we don't need to worry about that. The job is done when it's done, not when the bell rings.
What is your cancellation fee?
Call or text us before we show up and there is no charge. We understand that our customers are busy and may need to schedule or cancel a visit on short notice; we do our very best to accommodate all last minute requests.
Why are your prices better than so many of the other services?
Because we don't use employees. When you hire a service with employees you pay two people for the work of one, and the prices and services are geared towards maximizing the number of dogs that can be processed per hour. That's why we don't offer different "types" of dog walks, we are full service every time. Your dog doesn't want to be potty break number 9; regardless of how many dogs you can cram into an hour, for each dog there is only one walk per day and they look forward to it. We develop relationships with the dogs we walk. We love them, and we walk them like we'd want our own dog walked, not like a number. We have a cap on the number of dog walks we do per day so we never have to rush. We also have a pet sitting cap, and it's the same everyday including holidays. We focus on service, not money, and that approach has kept us in business for 26 years (so far!).
Do you give medications to pets and is there an additional charge?
Yes, you can arrange for us to administer pills or injections to your pets. There is no additional charge for this service- pet medications cost enough already, and we don't like to take advantage of illness for karma reasons.
How many times a day can you come?
That depends on you and your pet's needs. We will do our best to accommodate your schedule and we usually make between one and four visits per day to a customer. Typically people request one or two visits for cats, two or three for dogs, but it varies from situation to situation. It's up to you.
Is there a holiday or weekend surcharge?
No, we charge the same price per visit all year round.
Why don't you have more Yelp and other online reviews?
We're not a typical service, most of our business comes from word of mouth and we have a more personal interaction than the online services like yelp or rover. In 26 years we just haven't had that many actual reviews, our customers have been more personal with calls, cards, gifts and such. If we do our job correctly there should be nothing to review, your home and pets should be exactly as you left them. If you just got back from a good or bad vacation we should be the last thing you think of reviewing. We're not a restaurant, most people don't review their pet sitters unless something goes really wrong. Many of the reviews you read are bought or solicited, you can tell by how perfectly awesome they are. We don't ask our friends and family to review us, we don't incentivize our customers to do so, we don't buy them and we don't fake them ourselves. We don't spend money with Yelp or Google, and we don't buy reviews from the hundreds of marketing companies that sell them, like reputationstacker.com, customerlobby.com, getfivestars.com, reviewinc.com, signpost.com and many more.
It's deceptive and ultimately worthless.
What about snowy or rainy days; do you still work in bad weather?
Our general rule is that if you can make it to work, so can we. We've never had to cancel a visit due to weather (we have 4wheel drive vehicles, and a spare vehicle, which helps!). We do adjust our walks for weather based on your dog's preference- Labs love snow, Greyhounds don't; Labs love rain, Pugs don't. Labs love everything.
We have cameras in our home. Is that a problem?
So do we, so does everyone. We like ours, it's nice to be sure everything is OK. People don't have them for creepy reasons, it's just modern tech for peace of mind. You can't go shopping without being on one, every restaurant, club, movie theater, roads and most workplaces have them. They're ubiquitous. We are just there for the pets, we're not doing anything odd so we generally forget about them. It's your home, you don't need anyone's approval to keep an eye on it. You'll likely find us boring...
Do you service my area?
This map shows our general service area, contact us if you're not sure.