January 5, 2015 – We were back to our regular pet sitting schedule today…or we would have been if a snow storm hadn’t ripped through the area all day! Last year at this time we’d been socked-in since early November. This year we had a couple of hair-raising snow storms before our green Christmas (no complaints), but it all came to an abrupt end a few days ago.

With the holidays behind us, everyone was getting back to work and school today…until all the schools in the county called a snow day and several businesses shut down early.

As a pet sitter, what do you do? While there are hundreds of people out and about, and it IS our job to be out looking after our clients’ dogs and cats, is it shirking responsibility to cut any calls where someone is home when the driving is hazardous to get there? Is asking if the client plans to cancel, rude?

Sometimes we’ll get a text from a client saying there’s a snow day so they cancel…but most often families have their own brand of confusion happening those mornings and the pet sitters coming at lunchtime are WAY off their radar.

We used to hang back from getting in touch, but after taking our life in our hands a few times to get to a dog only to find the owners home, our attitude changed. Now we text the “most likely to be home” people in the morning, and four out of five times they’ll have someone there.

We don’t recommend asking every time there’s a little hiccup in the weather, or just because you’re not in the mood to go out, but when safety is a factor, make the call (or text.)

Today we had one cancellation, one person come home while my husband was there, one person text

On the way home.

On the way home.

to say not to worry if we couldn’t get their even though they weren’t home either, and one regular call with no contact. The dog we had stay last night went back a couple of hours late because of the bad weather. And the dogs we have to look after for the whole week came home with me after my part-time office job today. So as I type this, I have a room full of rescues from one household all snoozing gently.

It’s been a full day filled with trying moments and decisions. How was your pet-filled day?