Welcome to our website! My name is Clyde Perkins and I will act as your "House & Pet Sitting" tour guide for the next few minutes...

Since you are visiting our site, I am compelled to think you may share a portion of your life with one or more terrific household pets and you, more so than the cats and dogs could have a need to travel occasionally. Who knows, at this very moment you might even be on some sort of mission, searching for a trustworthy House & Pet Sitter person to watch your home as well as your animals when you take that trip that you have been discussing recently...

Whatever the case, let me share a little information with you and your family concerning what we do and how we do it. We locate in Tacoma, Washington and our service is one of providing temporary, residential House and Pet Sitting solutions to families throughout the South Sound region. We are House & Pet sitters! Our typical program has a qualified sitter staying in the client's home to care for the household animals on a nightly or full time basis and we've been doing this sort of thing for seven plus years. One of the key reasons we are able to make our programs work is because we have a wonderful group of sitters that make their homes in or near the various South Sound communities we serve.

Because it's very important to have everyone reading from the same page, we prepare a simple agreement for each assignment we accept. This document lists the names and descriptions of the pets, the care they require, essential emergency contact information and naturally, detailed instructions for the sitter to follow while in the home.

If we are house sitting for you and the sitter is faced with an unexpected situation, be comforted with this thought. Regardless of the hour, or where you happen to be, the sitter that is staying in your home does so knowing that he or she is only a phone call away from accessing the company's back up team. To live up to our pledge to our clients as well as our sitters, we monitor our company phones and answer all calls in real time, twenty four hours a day, without fail, every day of the year!

Once you elect to use our services, prior to your date of departure, your entire family, pets included, will be invited by your sitter to participate in an informal get acquainted session at your home. This is an important, mandatory meeting and of course, there's no charge for the initial visit. Added sessions, if required, can often be arranged for a modest fee.

NIGHTLY SITTING. . . . . . . . . . $36.00 PER NIGHT

Unless you request a change in basic instructions in our nightly sitting contract, you can expect the sitter to be on your doorstep at six in the evening to care for the animals as instructed and stay the night. With the completion of the chores the following morning, the sitter will depart the house for the day and return that evening, again at six, to start night two and so on until the contract runs its course.

FULL TIME SITTING. . . . . . . . . . $48.00 PER DAY

This plan calls for the assigned sitter to schedule his or her arrival at the client's home at a time acceptable to both parties to start the clock on day one. The term, Full Time Sitting, as we have come to use it, means: "The sitter will stay in the client's home each night as well as most of each day to carry out prescribed House & Pet Sitting duties. However, during the course of each day, at times of his or her choosing, the sitter may opt to be away from the property for a period of up to three continuous hours at a time."

THE ABOVE RATES INCLUDE:

Care for any mix of up to three client owned cats & dogs, water house plants, gather the mail, handle the recycle, trash & yard debris totes where required and manage the incoming phone activity as directed. Charges for additional animals, or chores and services of substance, if any, must always be discussed and resolved at the time of booking.

RELATED SERVICES:

If, for some reason, you are not comfortable with having our sitter stay in your home overnight, please consider this potential solution. If you feel the needs of your animals can be properly met by having a Home-Sitters' representative drop by your place each day to tend your pets on a schedule of your choosing, you may want to call and ask about our very affordable, "Pet-Watch" program...

There is no question about it! Our sitters are the stars of our show! Many have retired from the workplace, most are women and not surprisingly, each has a warm and generous attitude insofar as caring for companion animals. This is who we are and this is what we do! If your preference is one of having a mature, responsible person stay in your home and treat your animals with respect, you will serve yourself well by contacting us the next time you need a sitter.

When you decide to use our services, particularly if a holiday or long weekend is involved, call early. Since fulfilling any request is largely dependent on sitter availability, we ask that you call us in the early stages of trip planning. A few of our clients, to ensure having their favorite sitter for a special trip, will sometimes choose to firm up a schedule with us as much as a year in advance of their travel dates.

As an aside, if you were to find yourself chatting with a few of our clients or sitters, you might come away with the feeling that for a tiny company we seem to have a huge list of rules. No doubt about it, we are guilty as charged! We believe and we trust you will agree, since our task is often a matter of guarding valuable properties and priceless lives, creating a set of common sense rules as well as conditioning the members of our team to live by them, are good things.

Answers to the four most frequently asked questions of us are...

• (a) full time sitting is our most popular plan
• (b) you needn't provide food for the sitter
• (c) we will leave your home as we found it
• (d) gratuities are always welcome

And to all of you who have previously used our services, we thank you. We trust our performance lived up to or exceeded your expectations. Naturally, we look forward to hearing from you during the planning stages of your next outing.

We elected to use this space to provide clients and friends access to a cross section of pet oriented websites that we hope you find worthwhile. You'll find these sites focus on several areas of interest, not the least of which is the excellent online version of Merck's Veterinary Handbook. We encourage you to browse the lot and stay as long as you like. If you are ready, line up your links and click away!

• DOG-BREEDS Whether you wake up in the middle of the night with questions concerning the lineage of your pooch, or just want to have hours of fun, this is the link for you! This site is surely a must for dog lovers. You will enjoy the photos as well as the data tracking hundreds of canine breeds back through the years, world wide.

• DOGWISE If you're a serious dog person, or if you are looking to enrich another person's life with a thoughtful book or video concerning man's relationship with man's best friend, you've come to the right book vendor. Their knowledgeable staff is standing by, ready to listen and anxious to serve you in any number of ways, including the selection process.

• FOR CAT FANCIERS To satisfy your curiosity and perhaps clear up a nagging feline mystery or two, jump right in. From the colorful Abyssinian to the somewhat rare, Turkish Van, when the conversation turns to cats, this site gets it done!

• THE MERCK VETERINARY MANUAL This treasure is the complete, illustrated, searchable online version of the current edition of the Merck Veterinary Handbook. If for no other reason, you may want to keep this popular manual close at hand as a reliable diagnostic tool. It's a winner! Go ahead and start your research project today!

• DOG-DECOR This family owned, Texas based retailer is the best "Canine Breed" merchandise and supplies website we've found on the web. They offer an extraordinary array of quality, breed specific items to meet every budget. Take a little time and check them out. You, your dogs and the lucky folks on your gift list will be glad you did...

• SIT-STAY In case you haven't heard, it's been widely reported that, SIT-STAY is where the smart dogs do their business. This outstanding retailer offers an expansive selection of high quality canine edibles, specialty clothing, hard to locate equipment and much more. So, if this is where the smart dogs go and you enjoy dealing with really nice people, maybe you best come have a look!

• ONLY NATURAL PET STORE Through this popular pet store, without leaving your home, you have the option of consulting with a Holistic Vet by phone concerning animal health issues. Perhaps you should check it out! This online firm locates in Colorado and to benefit your animals, they carry a huge stock of medicines, supplements, foods and supplies that may be important to one or more of the holistic nutritional and health plans you have chosen to pursue for your pets.

Here's the question: "Why would anyone select an animal shelter as a place to visit... ?"

The reply should be: "Why not?" It seems that any person with an interest in pet welfare, would jump at an opportunity to experience a visit to an animal shelter. Once inside the walls, when you're sufficiently moved by what you see, smell and hear, we hope you decide to join the ranks of your friends and neighbors as a shelter volunteer. Here you can expect to try your hand at nurturing a living resource that is truly in need of our collective help. It is a place where a quick bath, a little attention, or simply a walk around the block can really make an inspiring difference.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the boys and girls that fill our animal shelters and foster homes have fallen on hard times and are, as a practical matter, homeless and in jail. However we choose to describe their situation, all have an urgent need to be adopted into real homes by real families. We're asking you to assist wherever and however you can to help make pet adoption programs successful everywhere. Keep in mind this alarming, unattractive truth. Throughout the nation, very often the harsh alternative to pet adoption, sadly, is pet euthanasia... This process plays out time and again and was used to destroy over two million pets in our country last year.

Remind your friends, family and neighbors of the huge role they are invited to play in promoting pet adoptions on a person-to-person basis. Finding homes for the lost or cast off cats and dogs that languish in our shelters is a truly a great place to get started. It's a plan we can each pursue as individuals and remember, it all starts with a few words. You personally may not be in a position to adopt a pet at this very moment, but if you're like most of us, I'll bet you know someone who can. Make yourself proud! Let's pick up a phone and make that call...

Are you ready to visit a shelter or two on the web? When you click on the link at the end of this page, as if by magic, you'll be whisked away to a wonderful website identified as petfinders.com. With a focus on pet adoptions, Petfinders offers continuously updated listings, most with photos, of reasonably large numbers of animals, primarily canines, that are awaiting adoption. To protect the animals, pet adoptions are most often handled with assistance from participating associations, rescue organizations and animal shelters. During your online tour, keep in mind that many of these institutions work with animals large and small, so ask your mouse to take you into a few of the lesser known areas where you can spend a little time with the birds, bunnies and other critters...

On a personal level, we're happy to share with everyone that our Dalmatian, Spuds, an animal we love dearly most of the time, was rescued by our family from the Humane Society facility on Center Street in Tacoma. It felt good then, it feels good now and he's a Great Guy!

Here's the link we promised...

Thank you for dropping by...

call us @ 253.473.8887

or click here to send mail

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