Advice PLEASE! My family is going away for 3 1/2 days and the twenty year old son of a friend is going to stay at our place and keep an eye on our dogs and my mother's (total=3). I would like to give him something to thank him, but I'm not sure what's a good amount? Does anybody have some suggestions? Thanks so much for your time and help!
Thank you all SO much for all the really great advice/ideas. I think we'll probably go with $25/day.
Hi Stephanine,
I've boarded my dogs in the past and I've paid 14.00 a day per dog. I also have a friend that does pet sitting where she goes to her clients home 2 times a day. She charges 20.00 a day. Maybe that will help.
We've offered a wide range of 'incentives' for pet-sitters. The best, in our opinion, is to just trade pet-sitting with friends: when we go out of town they take care of our pets and when they go out of town we take care of theirs. It's an ideal situation. But, when we went to Europe a few years ago we paid an acquaintance to stay at our house and gave her about $35/day. She was a college student who was just happy to be on-her-own for a couple of weeks. Recently we had the teenage son of some friends of ours stay at our house for a few days, and offered him the use of our car as the 'payment' (I left a note in the glove-box stating that I authorized him to drive my car during the 4-day period). Just some ideas... We have four cats and a dog so each time travel we face this dilemma. Good luck!
My sons have house/pet sat before - they never stayed at the house, just went over several times a day to feed/play with the animals. They have only done one animal, and were paid $10 per day. Since you have more animals, you may want to up that a bit. Also, find out how much it would cost to put them all in a kennel for the amount of time you would be gone. That will give you a ballpark figure to start from and you can work downwards from there. My neighbors were always thankful they didn't have to kennel their pets with my sons around!
We pay a semi-professional $30/visit for two dogs. I am checking into a neighbor teenager's rate and get back to you.
We pay what it would cost us to kennel our dog at the vet..$20 daily. This is paid to one of my younger siblings usually & I think it's good money for them and it's way better than kenneling! They stay at our house. The pet services that would come to my house cost way more, plus they're often per visit and our dog eats 3-4 times a day- yikes- that would be costly per visit! We have one dog and two cats. I hope that's helpful!
SInce it is a family friend, I think professional rates are a little much. When my friend goes out of town, and the person is staying at her house, she gives them a gift card to the nearest grocery store and movie money. Usually the grocery has 20 bucks for every day, and movies for 2 nights. Since he is only staying for 3 nights, maybe one movie night would be sufficent and maybe a gift certificate to a good restaurant close to your house, enough for 2 people. Another good tip, how much would you like to be paid for doing the same thing?
We pay a pet sitting service $22 a visit to come to our house. However, we also just had a friend to stay at our house while we were gone. She lives in an apartment without a pool and was excited to come stay at our house to use the pool, so it was a somewhat mutual benefit. She was staying for a week. I told her to help herself to anything in the house and left her $80 for groceries or whatever. After reading some of the responses, seems too little, but she was happy with it...???
My (17 yo) son does this for a friend of ours and he gets 50.00 a day. I hope this helps!
C. Willis
Helping Families earn supplemental income
www.MyHomeCottagebiz.com
We recently did the same thing- house sitting and dog sitting for our two large dogs for ten days- and how we figured it was by looking at what we were going to have to pay for a kennel for the two of them and roughly giving half...in our case the sitter would be saving in gas and grocery money for the ten days...but do what you feel is fair. It is amazing to see what it costs to kennel them! But it was so great to have someone here to water the plants, and the dogs were much happier at home :) hope this helps!
Check and see what it would cost to board the three dogs with the vet for the time you are away. Start with that amount and adjust up or down depending. Is it better for the dogs to remain at home? Is the care complicated or is it just a matter of keeping the bowls full and the doggie door open? If he's staying there then you should add something for house sitting, especially if you have a pool, which might need attention this time of year.
D.
