House Sitting explained
Having a Sitter come and stay in your home in a guest room overnight can relieve anxiety from putting your beloved pet in a kennel or cattery where they may come back sick or stressed. House Sitters should be free to come and go from your home throughout the day to attend to personal errands or go to a day job, but they essentially come back to the house and stay the evening and overnight.
After discussion together, agreed duties might include:
- Watering garden, chlorinating swimming pool or mowing
- Feeds and waters pets and takes sick pets to veterinarian for treatment
- Monitoring of entrances to property and securing locks to prevent access of unauthorised people.
- Staying every night from 8pm to 6am.
- Answers telephone and doorbell, takes messages, and shares information to you as requested.
- Brings in mail from the letterbox.
- Cleans up after themselves using the home's cleaning equipment.
Tip 1: Always discuss the number of overnight hours you want a Sitter to stay in your home in writing on PetCloud prior to the booking starting, and ask them whether they feel they can commit to that. For example, if you feel that you'd like a Sitter to stay 10 hours overnight with your pets from 8pm until 6am every day, then you need to discuss this and then summarise it in writing by messaging through the App and give the Sitter a chance to decline the booking if they dont feel they can meet your expectations. Don't try to convince them, because it's in your pets best interests to find someone who is happy to be 100% devoted to your pet. If this is the case, meet with other Sitters.
Tip 2: Always discuss whether you are happy to allow the Sitter to invite a guest to visit or stay. For example are you ok with a boyfriend/girlfriend/family/friend staying over, do you want a police check run on them prior to the booking starting? You can request the guest get a police check done here: https://petcloud.nationalcrimecheck.com.au/