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Pet sitting - is this a reasonable price


Teresa in MO
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One of my son's employees is going on vacation for 10 days and is needing someone to dog sit her 6 month old shih-tzu puppy.  My son asked me if I was interested.  She would bring the dog to my house.  It is not fully housetrained.  She offered to pay $150 for the 10 days.  I felt this was too low and said I would do it for $250.  Is that reasonable or is her price more in line with the norm?

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18 minutes ago, Teresa in MO said:

One of my son's employees is going on vacation for 10 days and is needing someone to dog sit her 6 month old shih-tzu puppy.  My son asked me if I was interested.  She would bring the dog to my house.  It is not fully housetrained.  She offered to pay $150 for the 10 days.  I felt this was too low and said I would do it for $250.  Is that reasonable or is her price more in line with the norm?

I wouldn’t even do it.  Because I couldn’t handle a non house broken dog in my house. 

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We just paid $25 per day to board our dog at the vet for a week. I paid my niece $125 to watch her for a week earlier this spring, but she wasn't charging me; I just gave her a gift card to be nice. I paid a teenager $10 per day to visit our cat once per day and feed her some wet food. We are giving her a little gift as a bonus, because she unexpectedly had to perform a goldfish flushing funeral.

If you charge $250 for 10 days, I think it's a little steep. What about $200? That is $20 per day.

Edited to add -- I think that for the amount of work that it takes to watch a dog 24/7 that $25 is not out of line, really. I am just suggesting that the person who owns the pet may think it is too much and balk.

Edited by Storygirl
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I pay $25 for my incredibly easy to look after dog to stay overnight at a farm, where basically he’s their pet while we’re gone. 

More than the toilet training (and are they not trained by then?), is whether it’s going to cry at night. Is it crate trained. Is it going to chew your house. 

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I think it's one thing when it's a friend or even a close acquaintance, but this is more like a part-time job, like rover.com, for someone you don't even know.  I've paid between $25-$30 per day for rover.com...  However, they also take the dog on walks several times/day, play with him, send me text message updates, etc.  Maybe if you're just going to keep him behind a puppy gate in your kitchen and make sure he's fed and safe, $20/day would be reasonable?  But a puppy can be a lot of work whether you plan on it or not.  And as someone else mentioned, will he keep you up at night crying?  Will he be chewing everything and need constant surveillance?  Exactly how much is he house trained?

I suppose if it's a friend of my ds and I enjoyed dogs and had the time, I might do it for less as a way to help them out.  But if you're truly doing it only as a part-time job to earn a little extra money, then I certainly think you could ask more than what she offered.

 

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5 hours ago, arctic_bunny said:

I pay $25 for my incredibly easy to look after dog to stay overnight at a farm, where basically he’s their pet while we’re gone. 

More than the toilet training (and are they not trained by then?), is whether it’s going to cry at night. Is it crate trained. Is it going to chew your house. 

It would be unusual for a six month old Shih Tzu or other small dog to be reliably house trained by six months, especially in a new environment. By one year is much more the norm.

Teresa, I really think it depends on the COL in your area. Neither what she offered nor what you countered with seem unrealistic to me. I'd probably split the difference and say $200 if the puppy is content being in a crate. If not, I'd stick to $250 (at least).

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A non-house trained dog would be even more anxious in your home I would think, and may have even more accidents.  $250 is beyond reasonable.  

We pay our neighbors $20/day to come twice per day, doesn't matter how many dogs.....we used to have 2, we now have 1.   I have told them they are more than welcome to just come let them out in our fenced yard, go back home and have their breakfast, etc....and come back in 30-60 min . to let them in, feed them, and make sure they are ok, and the same at night, just let them out for a while when you have dinner, and make sure they are fed and watered.

But my neighbors love my dog(s) and my immediate neighbor has told me when they come they stay a while!

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$250 seems way too low to me, given the fact that you are not only going to be caring for the dog, you are going to be cleaning up after it for ten whole days. I would expect to pay much more than that, and I don't live in a high COL area.

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As a person who owns a pet sitting business $250 for 10 days for a puppy is on the low side.  I charge $30/night for the dog to stay at my house if it is house trained and $40 if it isn't.  But since you don't own a business and have no overhead then I think $250 is reasonable.  $150 would not be worth the hassle of having a dog that isn't house trained yet because they are a lot of extra work.

Edited by hjffkj
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9 hours ago, TechWife said:

I just paid $15 per day for two cats, twice daily visits with medication administration for one of them twice a day. This is for a vet tech doing undergrad, hoping to go to vet school. She is awesome! 

Wow that is an incredible price.  Don't let go of that pet sitter.  I charge $15 per visit for a job like that and that is actually cheap for my area. Most would charge $20/visit.  

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3 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

It would be unusual for a six month old Shih Tzu or other small dog to be reliably house trained by six months, especially in a new environment. By one year is much more the norm.

Teresa, I really think it depends on the COL in your area. Neither what she offered nor what you countered with seem unrealistic to me. I'd probably split the difference and say $200 if the puppy is content being in a crate. If not, I'd stick to $250 (at least).

Thanks, I wasn’t sure, but had an idea that smaller dogs would take longer. And our lab came to us at 8 months fully trained, so no clue! We still had the first night of whining in the crate, and I’m so glad *that* wasn’t long term!

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Whether you live in a low or high cost of living area, don’t do the job for less than you are willing. If $250 is what you are comfortable with, that’s what you should charge. Too often I think we undervalue ourselves. 😊

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3 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

 

Teresa, I really think it depends on the COL in your area. Neither what she offered nor what you countered with seem unrealistic to me. I'd probably split the difference and say $200 if the puppy is content being in a crate. If not, I'd stick to $250 (at least).

^^^This is exactly what I was thinking. If this is not a friend (doesn’t sound like it is), then I’d go with $250. If it’s not a ‘I’m just wanting to help this person out situation’ then really, just charge what would make it worth it to you. 

Edited by mmasc
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3 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

It would be unusual for a six month old Shih Tzu or other small dog to be reliably house trained by six months, especially in a new environment. By one year is much more the norm.

Teresa, I really think it depends on the COL in your area. Neither what she offered nor what you countered with seem unrealistic to me. I'd probably split the difference and say $200 if the puppy is content being in a crate. If not, I'd stick to $250 (at least).

This was our experience as well.  We've only had large dogs until our present one (my dd's -- but he's with us a lot).  He's a little fellow, and has really only recently become trustworthy in that area.  He's just over 10 months old now.

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1 minute ago, Rachel said:

Whether you live in a low or high cost of living area, don’t do the job for less than you are willing. If $250 is what you are comfortable with, that’s what you should charge. Too often I think we undervalue ourselves. 😊

Yes I agree with this. 

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10 hours ago, TechWife said:

I just paid $15 per day for two cats, twice daily visits with medication administration for one of them twice a day. This is for a vet tech doing undergrad, hoping to go to vet school. She is awesome! 

 

35 minutes ago, hjffkj said:

Wow that is an incredible price.  Don't let go of that pet sitter.  I charge $15 per visit for a job like that and that is actually cheap for my area. Most would charge $20/visit.  

 Boarders here charge $19 per night.  And you can’t pick up on Sunday evening, so that usually adds another day.  I have had several young adult friends house and pet sit for $15 per day.  We have a pool and I leave some food for him/her.  

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It really depends where you are.  A professional boarder here is like $40+ a night depending on what you want. And they charge like $29 and up for just doggie daycare.  I agree with don't undervalue yourself.  I wouldn't charge as much perhaps as the professional boarding places that have private crates/rooms for overnight.  But for a dog that isn't fully trained and has puppy tendencies, I wouldn't go much more than $10 a day lower.  And if having a semi-trained dog in the house doesn't work for you, it's ok to say no too.  

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I pay 50/night for someone to stay at our house.

Boarding is typically around 25/day for a small dog in a basic kennel. Can be a LOT more in a fancy place. 

I'd say "fair" is what it's worth to you. 25/day seems like the low end, and I'd not go cheaper than that unless you really like the person and want to do them a favor. For a stranger, unless you have some charitable reason for wanting to help . . . nope. 

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ds 15 gets between $15-20 per day depending what he needs to do.

 The 3 dogs are at the neighbour's house. He goes over 2 times a day, put rugs on them at night and takes them off in the morning, feeds them, makes sure they have water and throws sticks for them to run after for 10 minutes. He gets more when he needs to throw hay for the horses.

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Can I slightly derail this? 

Is anyone else surprised by the number of people IRL who ask for pet or childcare for really low prices?

The latest IRL is a woman who wants 40 hours of childcare a week, and will only pay $400/month. (We are in a HCOL area and with a huge childcare shortage, so that is the average weekly price at the going rate. Even the subsidized “camps for kids” are just slightly under that.

How do you politely respond to such a bold request? Especially when it comes with a plea for charity (ie—don’t know what we are going to do/this is all we can pay...)

 

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12 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Can I slightly derail this? 

Is anyone else surprised by the number of people IRL who ask for pet or childcare for really low prices?

The latest IRL is a woman who wants 40 hours of childcare a week, and will only pay $400/month. (We are in a HCOL area and with a huge childcare shortage, so that is the average weekly price at the going rate. Even the subsidized “camps for kids” are just slightly under that.

How do you politely respond to such a bold request? Especially when it comes with a plea for charity (ie—don’t know what we are going to do/this is all we can pay...)

 

 

I am not surprised. Especially for childcare. Which is a need if you can't do it yourself (working, especially if single so there is no other parent to switch hours with/pick up the economic burden), but also can be a significant chunk of the check.

"no" is still polite.

 

Edited by vonfirmath
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13 hours ago, prairiewindmomma said:

How do you politely respond to such a bold request? Especially when it comes with a plea for charity (ie—don’t know what we are going to do/this is all we can pay...)

I finally decided that if they have the cojones to ask, I can certainly summon up the cajones to decline. If it's money-related, I just usually reference the obvious fact that I have bills to pay also, and that requires a certain amount of money coming in. I usually find that the boldest of the bold are rarely actually short of money, they just really don't want to spend it on childcare or tutoring or whatever service they think they can bargain down. 

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