Pro Content Site

So, You Love Pets Do You?

Try Looking After Others With Your Own Pet Sitting Business !

A Career AD: Flexible hours, Promising salary. Holidays negotiable. Be your own boss. No experience necessary.

If you spotted the above ad in the Help Wanted section of your local newspaper would you laugh, "Too good to be true"? But it is true! Have you always said, "I'd never have the money or the skill to start my own business." But you do! One of the easiest businesses to start and operate requires very little money. The only necessary skills are patience, time, and lots of love. The business? Pet-sitting!

Jackie McDonald owner of Jackie's Pals in Houston, Texas, started her pet-sitting business after working eight years in a doctor's office. "I wanted to do something I enjoy," she says. "I love animals and I find this work is very calming." Mcdonald spoke with other pet-sitters in her area and discovered how busy they all were. She felt her neighborhood could support another pet-sitter. She was right. Mcdonald just completed a very busy and successful holiday season.

Pet-sitting involves going into someone's home and caring for a pet when the owner isn't available. The service can include plant watering and mail and newspaper pick-up. The focus, however, is on the animal. Pet-sitting saves a client and the animal the aggravation of dealing with a kennel. Clients expect a variety of services: feeding, watering, liter box cleaner, pill giving, and especially some Tender Loving Care for a lonely animal who misses its master.

ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES

Owning a pet-sitting business has many of the same advantages of owning any business--you are your own boss, you set your own hours (depending on the number of clients you serve per day), and your paycheck will be limited only by your willingness to work. McDonald especially enjoys the flexible hours. "I also work out of my home," she says, "and that's a big advantage," Another advantage of pet-sitting is the opportunity of getting to know some real characters: Missy, the cat that only eats facing north (a real example, believe it or not), or Rufus, the blue-footed Amazon parrot who refuses to stay in a cage. Your list will be endless. McDonald describes the pleasure she finds in meeting both pets and their owners, "Ninety-nine percent of the people are very nice. Most are concerned about their pets or they wouldn't call me. And the animals love me no matter what."

As with any business,pet-sitting has a few disadvantages as well. If the business is to succeed, long hours and hard work is necessary. "this is not a get rich-quick scheme," McDonald says. Holidays will be especially busy. Servicing fifteen pets, each two times a day is not an unreasonable expectation. This doesn't leave much time for football viewing on New Year's Day. Unless you're a real animal lover some of the tasks can be unpleasant: Who wants to clean a litter box twice a day for two weeks? But that wildly wagging tail or the purr of a lonely animal that greets you at the door does make it worth the trouble. So do those paychecks at the end of the Christmas holidays. "you must truly love animals," McDonald advises, "or you won't enjoy this business."

<< Previous    [1]  2    Next >>