Pet Sitters

If you have someone watch your pet while you go away, make sure that the pet sitter has a list of emergency numbers, including a number where you can be reached, the number of your veterinarian, and the number to your local animal shelter. Your sitter should also have your dog's or cat's rabies certificate, so you should be sure it is licensed before you leave. Should your dog or cat become involved in a potential rabies situation while you're gone (e.g., he bites someone or gets into a fight with a raccoon), the vaccination and license information becomes crucial.

Make sure that your dog or cat is wearing some sort of ID. Pets are more likely to run off when left without their owners. If he's wearing an ID when he runs off, it's much easier for anyone who finds him to get him back home safely.

Make sure that your pet sitter knows to call the animal shelter if the pet does get lost. It's best to leave the sitter a complete written description of the pet or at least some color pictures so that the sitter can provide a detailed description of the pet should a lost report need to be filed.

Many pet sitters don't even know to file a lost report with the shelter. Other sitters who know to call the shelter if the pet gets lost can file only a general description of the lost pet ("sort of a medium-size brown dog") and may not even know whether the animal was male or female. Since we may have around 300 animals at the shelter at any one time, we need as accurate a description as possible to search our kennel for your pet.