[QUOTE=BuddyRoo;8279104]
I would try to have one person be responsible for 100% of the care. If you have an additional friend who wants to stop in, fine, but I would have the dog walker do the 3X per day thing throughout.
I say this coming as a dog owner and a pet sitter. On multiple occasions, I’ve helped pet sit for friends/neighbors who had 2-3 people chipping in to pet sit as you describe. In every. single. case. there’s been some kind of confusion about who was doing what and when resulting in no one showing up or mult people showing up at the same time.
I’d go for continuity. And for an older more sedate dog, I don’t think it’s problematic in the short term to have someone coming first thing in the AM, afternoon, and bedtime. I prefer to have people actually sleeping at my house when they pet sit, but I’m pretty sure my dogs would survive with 3-4 check ins per day.
I’m sorry for your loss.[/QUOTE]
I share pet sitting duties a lot. I am gone for work for 11 hours. I have another person CMM that always does the lunch break during the week. I stay over night so do morning, right after work and evening. There have been times where she will also pick up one of the weekend duties for me if I had prior plans. We have never had a problem. C
CMM does not do overnight stays. She is retired. So she does a lot of the daytime stuff I just can’t do and I will stay over night for those that want that.
CMM also shares with another pet sitter, K, that will stay over night but works too far away to do all of the daytime switching.
As long as there is clear expectations and written communication on who does what at when it can work well.
It is nice to have that second set of eyes to catch anything out of the ordinary. We all have each other’s cell numbers. If any of us get caught in traffic or have an emergency we can contact the other person to pick up slack. This way the animals all know us and we all have the house keys.
We also leave notes for each other frequently to keep everybody on the same page.
We had one week where CMM, K and I all covered the same place. I was traveling part of the week, K had another housesitting job and of course CMM does not do the over nights. Between the 3 of us it worked well for the 10 days of coverage. Since this place had 1 house cat, 1 barn cat, 3 dogs and 3 horses it isn’t like she had the option to board everybody.
It also means that no one person has to give up their own personal life for a full week or two. I feel that means we are all more likely to be able to spend some extra time with the critters.
Even though I am the weekend coverage I always encourage CMM to come use the pool during the summer even during the weekends. Like any animal lover she brings the dogs out to hang at the pool with her and takes a walk through the barn just to check on everybody. Extra coverage for the owner for free and the pets all benefit. (Yes the owner lets us all use the pool).
As long as there is clear written communication multiple petsitters can work very well.
