Managing dog sitting clients

A lot of people think that a dog sitting side hustle would be fun because you’re dealing with sweet cuddly dogs. Well, that may be partially true, but understand that the customer is the human owner not the dog and your communication with them is more important to them than if you’re going above and beyond to care for that dog. This post is talking about how to pick good human clients who can be worked with and ending relationships with bad clients.

As of the time of writing this post, I’ve been doing dog sitting as a major side hustle for almost two years. I’ve done a total of 220 bookings, 146 of which were from repeat clients and I have 34 repeat clients and 80 reviews on Rover. I may not be the top authority on managing client relationships but I think I have some insights.

The first insight I have is the initial client communication. If a client sends you a message with minimal details about the booking request, responds quickly, and does not request a meet and greet, they are likely to be great clients. I’m at a point with my profile on Rover that I have credibility – they understand this. I know from looking at their dog’s profile what I am dealing with and just in general people will not put hyper aggressive dogs in a boarding situation with no meet and greet or no explanatory notes. It may sound like I’m not doing my due diligence with clients by not doing meet and greets but I’ve never been shocked in all of the 220 bookings and don’t want to block an hour or thirty minutes of my time, go back and fourth coordinating that meet and greet, and dealing with the potential that their dog or my dog won’t behave during the meet and greet.

With that said, if the client requests a meet and greet this is fine and I have always agreed to meet and greets as long as the client reaches out far enough in advance. You just have to be clear with them in advance about what they can expect, that your dog is friendly but excitable, and try to steer the meet and greet to be a walk around the neighborhood as opposed to in your house. I always feel like I need to fully clean my house for every meet and greet which just isn’t practical to be doing for higher volume dog sitting in my home.

The second insight is the ongoing communication with the client and two owner types to watch out for: 1) the hyper anxious owner and 2) the disorganized/uncommunicative owner. I’ve inadvertently accepted clients who messaged me almost every hour asking about how their dog is doing including into the late night hours until midnight. This just isn’t realistic to keep up with for a recurring client. The other bad client type is the owners who won’t communicate pickup and drop off times and randomly show up hours early or hours late after you’ve asked them multiple times to confirm pickup and drop off times the day before and the day of. You have to get rid of these clients. They are a waste of your time. Accept that the booking you accepted needs to be done to their satisfaction so do your best to respond quickly to all messages, send a bunch of photos, and after they pick up their dog and leave you a good review, block them on the app.

All of that said, most clients are very easy to work with and understand that they need to communicate and not constantly message you like a crazy person. You just need to avoid accepting or keeping the 10% of clients that use up 90% of your patience and time.