Pet Sitting Cost?

I'm going to bump you 'cause I want to know too. I have no idea what to pay a pet sitter and we may need one sometime. You're not in PA, I assume?

I joined Care.com a few months back to start pet sitting for some extra money, most people don't want to pay too much though.
Most of the ads I've seen people have listed the pay as $5-$15 an hour with the occasional $25 an hour.
I haven't had luck finding anything on there though because I have to take gas into consideration and the 5-15$ an hour ones are usually at least 10 miles away (and the 25$ an hour ones have been even further away) so it isn't really worth it.

If i were you I would charge anywhere between $10-25 an hour, depending on what all they want you to do.

If I went on holiday for like a week and needed someone like you to pop in and clean the cage and feed them I would probably
pay about £25-£30 for the entire week, but that's because I don't think it's a hard job minding piggies.
If it was a dog, then I'd pay you more.
If it was a complicated C&C cage that had levels and was time consuming I'd pay you more.
Just saying

addictivejuliet said:

If I went on holiday for like a week and needed someone like you to pop in and clean the cage and feed them I would probably
pay about £25-£30 for the entire week, but that's because I don't think it's a hard job minding piggies.
If it was a dog, then I'd pay you more.
If it was a complicated C&C cage that had levels and was time consuming I'd pay you more.
Just saying

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US $38 - $46? Is that per day? That reminds me, it probably depends a lot on where you are too.

The pet sitter I was considering charges by the visit regardless as to the type of pet. $15 a visit (I suppose more if you want your dog walked) for all pets in the home. So the costs go up depending upon how many times a day you need her to stop by. For a dog without a dog door/fenced yard, you may need her 3-4 times a day - upwards of $60 a day, but for a cat or a bird or a guinea pig, once a day is probably fine (maybe every other day for a cat), and the cost would be that much less.

Nope, for the whole week.
It depends where you live.
If your country is in debt and how poor everyone is.
I don't think it's a difficult job so nope I wouldn't pay that much a day.
But yes it depends where you are

addictivejuliet said:

If I went on holiday for like a week and needed someone like you to pop in and clean the cage and feed them I would probably
pay about £25-£30 for the entire week, but that's because I don't think it's a hard job minding piggies.
If it was a dog, then I'd pay you more.
If it was a complicated C&C cage that had levels and was time consuming I'd pay you more.
Just saying

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I'm thinking more along those lines too. When we went out of town for a week we had a friend who popped in several times a day to let the dog out (and play and sit with him) and clean the g-pig cage and I wanna say we paid her something like $40 and a gift card... She was happy to do it as it was on her way to and from work and she just hung out and watched TV with the pooch for awhile too. If she needed to stay there full time it would be a different story.

We have hired a teenager that lives next door to take care of our dogs and cats and have paid her about $10/day to come over twice (the dogs are outside during the day). We now have the piggies, so I would probably pay more, but it sounds like I'm getting a bargain any way you look at it! I don't think I could afford to go out of town if I had to pay $30-$40 a day!

Cheaper is always better when it comes to pet sitting; I think that's why it's hard to have a pet sitting business. If it's going to be your job, you have to charge enough to make it worthwhile, but you are competing against friends and neighbors who charge little to no money for the same thing.

Right now, I'm watching my neighbors' cats for the week while they are away on Spring Break; they did it for us when we had cats and I'm happy to do it for them - no money changes hands. Sometimes we'll get each other a souvenir or something, but not often. If we're going away overnight, I ask them to let the dog out a couple of times, but I think it's just too much to ask a neighbor to do that for more than one night, so we board the dog if we are going to be gone longer.

We haven't gone away since we have had GP's but I wasn't sure if the boarding place would take the GP's too so I looked into the pet sitter for our vacation in June. But, then a friend of my daughter (who has a GP) offered to watch them while we go away, so we'll take them up on that for sure. Much cheaper to board the dog for $30 a day and bring back a Tshirt for my daughter's friend, then pay $45-$60 a day for a week for a professional to come to the house.

So, am I right in assuming they charge by the day? What if you have more than one animal or even more than one kind of animal? My pet sitter would hit the jack pot because we have 5 dogs, two cats, and two guinea pigs. What do you think it would cost me for all those?

Thanks for all the advice.
I'm not planning on doing this for a full time job. I'm just planning on handing out some flyers around the neighborhood this summer to test the waters. I can understand that the prices would vary depending on how many pets the customers have, how long they are gone, and what they want me to do. So I'm thinking I might charge by day, because doing it per visit seems like I would be asking for too much money. I'm thinking starting $10 per day, but that would still be flexible.

WheekingPiggies said:

Thanks for all the advice.
I'm not planning on doing this for a full time job. I'm just planning on handing out some flyers around the neighborhood this summer to test the waters. I can understand that the prices would vary depending on how many pets the customers have, how long they are gone, and what they want me to do. So I'm thinking I might charge by day, because doing it per visit seems like I would be asking for too much money. I'm thinking starting $10 per day, but that would still be flexible.

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I would say check out the fees for petsitters in your area. I know it's and awkward conversation, but it's worth talking to the clients about what they're comfortable paying. I usually make about 100/week but that's with cats/dogs.

SheWolfSilver said:

So, am I right in assuming they charge by the day? What if you have more than one animal or even more than one kind of animal? My pet sitter would hit the jack pot because we have 5 dogs, two cats, and two guinea pigs. What do you think it would cost me for all those?

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I would think that it would depend on how many animals you have, but the age of the sitter, too. We have three dogs and two cats. The cats are pretty much maintenance free as we leave out enough food and water. We pay our sitter the $10/day because she's in high school. I think of that as extra spending $ for her and she only has to walk next door. I was going to look for GP sitters, though, for this summer because I'm not sure she would be willing to do so much extra for them. I would pay more, though, if she had to take care of the GPs because of the amount of work. I think it really depends on how much you expect the sitter to do when you consider how much you are going to pay.

rebeccars said:

I would think that it would depend on how many animals you have, but the age of the sitter, too. We have three dogs and two cats. The cats are pretty much maintenance free as we leave out enough food and water. We pay our sitter the $10/day because she's in high school. I think of that as extra spending $ for her and she only has to walk next door. I was going to look for GP sitters, though, for this summer because I'm not sure she would be willing to do so much extra for them. I would pay more, though, if she had to take care of the GPs because of the amount of work. I think it really depends on how much you expect the sitter to do when you consider how much you are going to pay.

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I can understand that guinea pigs are kind of high maintenance compared to a dog or cat.

I work at a vet clinic as a boarding attendant for animals. We charge $12 every night for small dogs and all cats, $15 every night for big dogs, and $10 every night for each bird, reptile or small pet. We charge $7 an hour for daycare. Lol. Usually if you want to start a business at home it would have to be a bit cheaper than that!