Adventures in Pet Sitting - On Call

I have two sets of clients.

There are the standing appointment people, who generally work long hours and need me to handle meals, potty breaks, walks, medications on a regular basis. I usually see their critters at least twice a week or more.

And then there are the vacation / traveler folks. They call me more sporadically, but the visits are twice or three times a day over multiple days.

The trick is weaving these two sets of required visits together into a logical route. Normally, I can sandwich the 'Regulars' between the 'Pop Ups'. Regulars need care mid-day. The Pop Ups are usually breakfast, maybe lunch, and bedtime. As you can imagine, I have some very full days!

The fun comes in when someone calls, halfway panicky, and tells me their planned-upon sitter can't make it... and they need to leave the next day (or sooner). Actually, I've gotten some of my most steadfast repeat customers in similar situations. The first major one was in January 2014...with a blizzard on the way. I still get to visit there a few times a year and it's always fun time!

They wrote a full description of their experience on a major customer review website:

We were heading out of town for the holidays, and the person we had lined up to take care of our animals had to cancel. So we found Deb of [redacted] here on [redacted], at the very last minute. Deb was amazing and we feel incredibly lucky we found her. When we called (the night before we were to take off for vacation!), she promptly came out for a meet and greet before we left, with treats in her pocket. You could tell she loves animals and was comfortable taking over, in spite of an initial growl from one of our dogs. THEN what became good pet care became top of the line pet care when the blizzard of 2014 hit. Deb came out twice every day, in spite of the weather. The one time she could not make it, she cleaned up the couple of messes the next day for us. We have a long driveway which got snowed in, and she parked her car at the end of the driveway and trudged up in the snow to take care of the dogs, check on the inside cats, and feed the outdoor barn cats. She made a makeshift shelter for the dogs on our porch to block the wind until it became unfeasible to keep them outside during the day because of the subzero temperatures. Deb also kept in touch with us, and texted about her visits us to reassure us about the kids, THEN when we were snowed out and could not get home, Deb reassured us she would still keep taking care of the pets as best she could, given the emergency status of the roads (she only missed one visit!). We were finally able to get home and everyone was doing great.

This is a sample of what was left of that storm a month later. (I took this shot at the time purely because my husband is an avid Blackhawks fan.) You can see the drifting effects were still evident. I'd normally have pictures of the critters, but this crew never slows down enough for decent shots. I'll keep trying.

Like I've mentioned earlier, this job is never boring. Sometimes the challenges are a little more than you expected! The great thing about situations like this is - I get to meet really awesome people, plus I get to test my skills to their limits. Thankfully, most days are routine, but it doesn't hurt to have life throw you a curveball now and again.

Upvote, ReSteem, &


Edited to add (Woohoo!):