To ask what you’ve paid for house/pet/horse sitting?

[HouseSitter2B]

I’m thinking about starting a business as a house sitter. I live in a rural area and many people have animals beyond your usual cats and dogs. I have many years experience of owning horses and I grew up on a farm so I’d be happy to care for pigs/sheep/chickens/whatever people had. Horse wise I’d be happy to do stable duties and lunge if required.

I am quite bamboozled about what I could charge though. I’ve looked at various pet sitters websites and they are generally pretty cagey about what the actual costs are - I guess that’s not deliberate as obviously every customer has different requirements regarding what they expect the house sitter to do.

If you have employed the services of a house sitter recently(ish), would you mind sharing how much you paid and what you got for the money? Did they stay at your house or just visit x times a day? Hoping I can get a bit of a guide, I don’t want to waste any existing house sitters’ time by pretending I want to book them to get prices. I’d like to work out if it’s viable after I have paid for insurance and registration fees etc.

I used to pay £10 a day for a persisted to come in once a day and feed my rats, rabbits and guinea pigs, though this was about 10 years ago.

I'd imagine horse care is quite sought after in some communities. Could you get an idea from looking at the price difference between DIY livery and full livery costs?

*A pet sitter. She was not unusually persistent, she was very nice!

£35.00 a night for a dog sitter is the going rate here- this is for one dog and the sitter stays overnight in your house. £5.00 for each additional dog. The sitter will specify what is the longest time time the dog will be left alone - typically 2 hours at a time whilst they walk other dogs. Depending on the breed and temperament of the dog they may get taken along and have extra walks. If the dog is a bouncy collie it will be happy to be out for most of the day! a little toy dog might be happy snoozing for most of the time. It's a hard job- very physical.

@mrsfollowill when you say a night, that’s for a whole 24 hours I take it? Except for brief periods of up to 2 hours?

@Stompythedinosaur around here prices are roughly £30 for DIY, £80 for part (everything except exercising), and £100+ for full, per week that is. It’s tricky, horse care could be chucking a section of hay at some shetlands in a field once a day or looking after someone’s fully stabled competition horses.

Yes it's for being in the house overnight- depends on the timings of the other jobs but generally dogs not left alone for more than 2 hours at a time. The sitter will probably settle into the house by 5.30- 6 pm and stay until 7.00 am - might go and do some other walks outside these hours - will look after /take out the sitted dog within these times but the do other jobs around the sitted dog. It's an approximation of what the dog will experience if their family was there .