To think this is a ridiculous price?

[VibesCurator]

First time getting a housesitter for my 2 dogs as a family member who used to watch them moved away. I got quoted £40 total per day by a sitter, AIBU for thinking this is ridiculous?

I'm not boarding them, the sitter would be staying in my house using my gas and electric. I have replied to them as much, but now that I am looking around at more sitters, it seems like an average price. How much does everyone else pay?

How much do you think someone's daily rate should be? At £40/day, that person is earning £200/week! How can they begin to live off that?

She probably thinks you are broke if you think £40/day is too costly. I think its very reasonable!

Then you can see that £40 a day is a good price, surely?

It is cheaper to have a school aged child than a dog these days.

This is a very specific comparison. I’d love to see your calculations. My dogs don’t have clothes or books or coach trips with classmates.

Popped in to show you my dog walkers Housesitting rates PER 12 HOURS. While I assume this is negotiable for a week/fortnight basis, I'd grab the £40 per day you are being offered and bank it.

12hr stay - Over night stay
£55 standard rate
£60 puppy rate
Additional Dogs from same household - £28
Additional Cats - £FOC
**
12hr Day time stay - £180
*peak, Bank holidays & over Christmas period = List price + 50%

I've skimmed through pages of people saying "you're a tight arse" now!
The useful advice, if you're for real, is to consider Trusted Housesitters, shop around for a dog sitter who will take them into their own home which should be cheaper or use kennels.
Clearly prices vary widely but round here kennels are from £20 a day for one dog, £30 for two sharing. The dogs are generally locked in individual pens most of the day and let out into a play area or walked once, maybe twice. It's not a great experience for most dogs but at least they're safe.
I have a professional dog sitter who charges £25 a day to take my dog into her home and walk him, look after him etc. She carries on with her normal life otherwise and can leave him for a few hours if she needs to. He seems happy enough and she has all the right qualifications, insurance etc There's always a bit of guilt leaving a pet whilst you go on holiday or whatever but the alternative is don't go anywhere.

It is cheaper to have a school aged child than a dog these days.
(It is cheaper to have a school aged child than a dog these days.*
This is a very specific comparison. I’d love to see your calculations. My dogs don’t have clothes or books or coach trips with classmates.

Blimey,people cant even have an exasperated throw away comment without someone taking everything literal and wanting evidence!

I took that as a light hearted comment to empathise how expensive dogs are! I know I've got 3!

You say yourself that it seems to be an average price, so clearly not ridiculous?

Id expect that just to pop in twice a day and do a walk, to actually stay there for £40 a day is ridiculously cheap unless you've left out some detail like you have a fantastic house with an indoor swimming pool and games room etc which they can enjoy to make it worth it.

😂

You're taking the piss more like, maybe she's being polite

Love this dogsitter!

I can just imagine the tone of your email to her Miss Snippy 😂

If the dog sitter does it for employment then charges have to reflect this.

That's cheap where I live, our sitter charges £50 per night for 2 dogs and this includes walking them and feeding 2x a day. She also lets them out intermittently - we think thats a more than fair price and leave her a decent tip and nice bottle of wine.

Try Trusted House Sitters.

FwIW, in SE we pay £35 for kennels for one dog for an overnight stay, and £45 for someone coming to the house stay over with her. It's a lot of money, but then we pay £13-14 an hour for a babysitter to sit with tweens who need little actual care, so relatively it's grey value as the house is safe and dog takes a lot more work over 24 hours than kids do over 3-4 hours.

Seriously? They are still in your house at work! They can't be doing any other work, not sure why you aren't thinking about that!

we did this one year.
What I didn;t realise until I booked it, was that the price increases per additional dog and per cat.
So we had a sitter for our dog. They just needed to re-fil the cat's bowl once a day, but we had to add £20 to the overnight fee for the 2 cats.

So I am guessing it is £40 because you have 2 dogs. With one dog it will be less.

This is about the same as home boarding, per dog for around here.

It's cheap. My cat sitter is £50 to stay in the house, £30 to visit twice a day.

Her response is perfect.

I would say that's reasonable I asked someone to pop in on my dog for half hour a day and they wanted £10

That’s really cheap tbh. I am a cat sitter and did an overnight recently and charged £35 per night. I fed evening meal and breakfast and gave medication and did litter tray
She originally also asked me to do 2 x visits in the day as well but I felt that was too tying with my other commitments so she ended up booking 2 x daily cat sitters AS well as he was elderly an ate little and often
For that £40 are you expecting her to be there the whole time? Are you wanting walks included for that?if so to either she is giving up her whole time and won’t be available for other bookings. I charge £10 for 1 x daily drop in and £15 for 2 so its more worth my while to do a few drop in’s than an overnight tbh
In my case I arrived at 7pm- did what needed to be done watched things on my phone (obv stroking the cat etc) and didn’t use anything. Other than a phone charger, a kettle and a toilet- the heating would be on already for the cat so I didn’t cost them hardly anything- they provided milk and teabags but I didn’t use it but the day time ones did

She's calling you cheap. And rightly so.

I pay my teen neighbour £15 a day to pop on and out 3 times a day to feed and let the dogs out to toilet if I'm out for a long day. No walking involved. He literally pops in for 5 minutes 3 times a day from right next door.

You want someone to give up an entire day for less than £20? Have you no respect for their time?

I don't understand how you expected to pay LESS than £20?

Did you expect it to be free?

It seems insanely cheap, its what 48 hours so at 'minimum wage' (£12.21) for an adult thats £586 and independent people usually charge more than minimum wage.

Lets argue you don't count sleep time as working (although I would expect you expect them to get up if your dog is sick, needs to pee, is howling etc... to deal with it) but lets cut say 18 hours for sleep, so minimum wage for 30 hours thats £366

Now lets says you are getting less than that as they are staying at your house, an au pair is deducted about £10 per day for board so remove £20 from that.

So £346

I would fully expect to pay more for a person to come to my house and stay their the whole time giving sole attention to my dogs in their own environment (where they are also watching your house) than I would expect to pay to board or kennel them.

It's 35 a day here per dog

Oh come off it, OP 🙄

I use trusted sitters, which is free but you pay an annual subscription. Usually very good, in fact much better than the one time we paid someone around £40 per day.

That’s so cheap. I pay £70 a day for one dog, and make sure I fill the fridge for her too. She lives in, does 2 walks a day, leaves the pup for a max of 2 hours a day and I get one update a day.
Im happy to pay this rate - our dog is part of our family and the expenditure part of owning a pet imo

This is bonkers.
You think earning £40 a day is too much? Presumably if she is house sitting your dogs she is not doing other paid work at the same time (unless she works from home whilst dog sitting - in which case, good for her )

OP do you earn more than £40 a day, out of interest ?
Would you stay away from your own home comforts and live out of a suitcase in someone else’s house and walk and care for their pets for the £20 a day you seem to think is reasonable !?

Honestly, give your head a wobble.

I pay £35 a day for my dog to be out with the dog walker from 9am - 3pm. And i’m in the north of England, not London!!