After a several month long break from everything caused by an intrusive health issue that sent me to a Chinese Medicine Doctor while I waited to eventually to have surgery we are back! Petsitting was never really meant to be a career move, but here in San Francisco it really is a sort of low hanging fruit of income options when life allows the flexibility with regards to taking the time out to visit or stay with somebody else’s pets.
We are starting to build up repeat clients, who will give us a call before asking anybody else to look after their pets.

Petsitting through Rover & by word of mouth.

To get started with petsitting as a ‘side-hustle’ we recommend using Yahoo Groups, neighbourhood message boards & Rover. Build repeat clients over time. If you would like to start petsitting using the booking agent Rover then you can follow this link to become a petsitter: https://refer.rover.com/s/Birgit5

I will get a bonus from Rover if you sign up AND book your first petsitting appointment within 90 days of signing up. Do read about the way Rover works, they take 20% of your fee and the host also pays a small booking fee to Rover. But despite this I still really value the platform. It has helped us earn $1000 over Christmas and New Year, a time when it is common to spend more than we earn. I think it is a great way to spend the holidays when one hasn’t got many family commitments. But petsitters are needed all year round. We get calls when people take a spontaneous weekend trip, visit family for a wedding or for other personal family reason, sometimes people have work trips or had a last minute cancellation from a friend who was going to look after their home and pets.

A picture of our current petsitting engagement. We document playtime & feeding of the pets and send daily pictures to the pet owners to let them know everything is going well during their absence from their home.

We use Rover exclusively for housesitting petsitting & pet-visiting. We don’t take the pets to our home but stay at theirs. We don’t participate in the Rover Dogwalking at all, we don’t want to get too involved with dog walking. Ultimately Jason and I have careers that we are trying to build but our Rover experiences have been positive and welcome cash injections.

It is important to state that petsitting in somebody else’s home is a REAL job. We take on a lot of responsibility and we conduct our service very professionally. We don’t short change the animal or their owner. We now charge $60 per day/night stay but to start with we initially charged only $30-$35 for a regular night stay. Yes, of course $35 for a 24 hour period is not good money, but if, like us, you have a flexible work schedule, then it makes sense to take the $35, work from home if I was going to do that anyway, and take the dog for a walk 2-3 times. We only accept what works for us. This means: usually only medium sized dogs not large ones, but sometimes we say yes to a big labrador, it always depends on our schedule and how we get on with the pet owner, too.

We try to captures attractive pictures of the pets that we petsit, I think of it as added value for the pet and home owner. I recommend presenting pet updates nicely.

This is definitely a big tip: ONLY accept booking requests that work for you. If you are not feeling comfortable with the owner, turn this opportunity down. This ensures that your Rover petsitting experiences will be predominately positive.
Above I created lots of links to the referral link, every link in this document opens the referral window. If you sign up and also use Rover I will get a bonus (an Amazon gift card). You can then in the future also recommend Rover, but please only do it if it works for you. We really benefitted from being part of Rover, I would not recommend it otherwise. If you create an amazing profile, with great pictures showing you, you with somebody’s pets and with a strong write up answering the questions pet owners might have before feeling comfortable to request you to take care of their home & pets. Create an ambience of trust. And then BE trustworthy and professional. Don’t say yes to everything, take it slow. And over time you will build a good portfolio and make a nice little extra income, which might help you take a holiday or see the dentist or create a savings buffer for a small emergency in the future. I highly recommend it!