The short version

I built and sold a pet care company. Ran it from 2004 to 2016. Ten employees at the end, and I hired every single one of them myself, badly at first and then on purpose. So when I tell you how to hire pet sitters who actually stay, I am not guessing. I lived the version where I hired whoever answered the ad, and I lived the version where I built a real system. Only one of those versions let me leave the building.

If you searched this because you need someone to watch YOUR dog, this is not your page. This one is for the pet sitting or dog walking business owner who needs to hire pet sitters for their company, and who is tired of training someone for six weeks just to watch them quit. That is the whole point of this guide.

Here is the thing. I have been teaching this since 2008, and there is a lot of it on this site already… what it actually costs to hire a pet sitter, what every owner should know before they have employees at all, and how to build a real employee program instead of a pile of people. This page is the front door to all of it. Start here, then go deeper wherever you are stuck.

Why Most Pet Sitting Companies Hire Backwards

You guys, here is the pattern I see over and over. An owner gets slammed, panics, throws a job post on Indeed at midnight, and hires the first warm body who says they love dogs. Ninety days later that person is gone, and the owner is back on Indeed at midnight again. That is not hiring. It is damage control wearing a hiring costume. I have a name for the two modes… recruitment versus reactionary hiring, and almost everyone reading this is living in the second one.

Hope ain’t a strategy, and neither is a job post you wrote in twelve minutes between visits. If you want to actually hire pet sitters who stay, you need a system that runs whether you are calm or slammed, because the system does not care what kind of week you are having. I walked through the whole broken pattern on the podcast in Solving The Hiring Problem In Your Pet Business (Ep. 123), and if you are in a full-blown slump right now, start with How To Get Through The Hiring Slumps (Ep. 1). That is the whole reason I built the 10-Step Jump Hiring Method.

The 10-Step Jump Hiring Method: How to Hire Pet Sitters Who Actually Stay

I split this into two phases. Phase one builds the system before you ever talk to a candidate. Phase two is where you actually hire and onboard the person you found. Skip phase one and phase two collapses, because you end up interviewing people you never should have let past the front door.

Phase 1: Pre-Hire, Building Your System

1. Define Your Ideal Candidate. Pin down three specific, essential qualities beyond “loves pets.” Loving pets is table stakes. It tells you nothing about whether someone shows up on time or knows what to do when a dog bolts. If you want the deep dive on exactly which qualities predict a stay versus a quit, I broke down seven of them separately in hiring pet sitters: 7 qualities that predict who stays. Read that one for the traits. Read this one for the system that gets you to a hire. And before you write a single quality down, go listen to The Single Most Important Question You Need To Ask Yourself About Your Staff (Ep. 291). Answer that one first and step one writes itself.

2. Write Attention-Grabbing Ads. Ditch the boring corporate job posting. Write a love letter that speaks directly to the person you defined in step one. Most pet sitting job ads read like a DMV form. Yours should read like you actually want THIS person, specifically, to apply. I gave you 20 Ways to Get More Applicants for Your Dog Walking Jobs (Ep. 416) if the well is dry, and the three ingredients every posting needs are broken down in does your pet sitter job posting have these 3 key ingredients. Then check your work… here is how to know if your hiring ads are actually working instead of guessing.

3. Establish Your Non-Negotiables. Use knockout questions in your applicant software to auto-filter people who fail your basics before you ever waste an hour on a phone screen. No reliable transportation? Cannot work weekends when that is a requirement? Gone, automatically, before it costs you time. I wrote the whole playbook for this one separately in how to perfect your hiring knockout questions, and 3 Ways To Attract Great Employees (Ep. 303) covers what to do when the filter leaves you with nobody.

4. Create a Phased Process. Build distinct phases with specific questions that test different qualities without overwhelming a candidate in one giant interview. Reliability in phase one, communication in phase two, judgment in phase three. Anyone who will not sit through the full process just told you something important about how they handle commitment. This is the step people skip, so I gave it its own episode… Why You Need Hiring Phases To Hire Fast and Effectively (Ep. 243), plus 4 Systems You Need In Your Hiring Process (Ep. 343) for the structure underneath it. The interview mechanics themselves live in the secret elements of a kick ass interview process.

5. Systematize Your Scoring. Assign numerical values or clean pass/fail criteria so hiring is objective, not a feeling you had about someone in a coffee shop. A scoring system is also what lets you finally hand hiring off to a manager without the whole thing turning into a guess. Score Big: 4 Advantages of Having a Standardized Interview Scoring System (Ep. 329) walks through exactly how to build the rubric. And when you ARE ready to hand it off, here is how to hire a manager for your pet business plus the 4 mistakes owners make when hiring an office manager (Ep. 293).

Phase 2: Hire and Onboard, Securing Your New Team Member

6. Prepare for the Interview. Write your questions in advance and be a detective. Let the candidate do most of the talking. If you are filling silence with your own voice, you are not learning anything about who you are about to hand a house key to. Sharpen the questions with How to Perfect Your Interview Questions When Hiring Dog Walkers (Ep. 368) and 4 Hiring Questions To Separate Good From The Great (Ep. 304). Know the red flags cold… Interview Warning Signs: 6 Red Flags To Watch For (Ep. 328). And please, before you sit down with anyone, read what questions you legally cannot ask at a pet sitting interview. That one keeps you out of trouble.

7. Create an Exciting Job Offer. Make the offer an event, not an email you fire off between visits. This is the moment that validates the candidate and gets them genuinely excited to join, instead of just accepting because it is a paycheck. What actually moves someone is rarely the hourly rate… Candidate Magnet: The Top 5 Benefits Candidates Actually Want (Ep. 327) tells you what belongs in the offer. And handle the people you did NOT pick, too… here is the exact template for that.

8. Design an Inspiring Onboarding. Turn the boring admin, the paperwork, the account setups, into a welcoming experience instead of a chore you both want to get through. First impressions of your company are made here, not on day ninety. This is the Onboarding Rainbow, and I have two episodes on it… 3 Of The Biggest Mistakes Pet Businesses Make During Onboarding And Training (Ep. 288) and Learn How To Never Lose An Employee with Joey Coleman (Ep. 341). The two requirements to lock in on day one are in 2 of the most important requirements to establish with new employees.

9. Implement Structured Training. Build a real, systematized training program and handbook so every new hire gets the same consistent, engaging experience, instead of whatever you happen to remember to tell them that week. I break down where AI can carry the drafting load for this in the pet business AI automation guide, so training stops living only in your head. On the podcast, start with Pet Business Staff Training That Actually Works (Ep. 455) and Why You Need Systemized Pet Sitter Training (Ep. 355). If you are not sure the training is sticking, I wrote how to know if your staff is actually retaining it. Video is the fastest way to scale this, and here is why I am so loud about it. The difference between a handbook and a training manual trips up almost everyone, so I broke that down separately. If you would rather not build both from scratch, my Employee Handbook and Training Manual is already done for you.

10. Analyze and Refine. Review your own data. See exactly where applicants drop off, where new hires quit, and tweak the process on purpose instead of by accident. This step is the difference between a hiring system and a hiring system that actually gets better every quarter. Retention is the number you are really watching, so pair this with Retention Revolution: How To Decrease High Turnover Rates (Ep. 325) and Why Your Pet Sitting Employees Quit and How to Fix It (Ep. 427). Culture is the quiet lever underneath both… Culture Club: Attract Top Talent With a Winning Culture (Ep. 326).

That is the whole method, front to back. It is also exactly what I walk pet business owners through, one on one, inside my own company for twelve years before I ever taught it to anyone else.

Always Be Hiring: Stop Waiting Until You Are Desperate

Always be hiring. Do not put all your eggs in one basket, and do not wait until you are drowning to post a job. Desperate hiring is exactly how a bad apple gets onto your team, because desperation makes you skip steps three and four of the Method above.

A year-round pipeline means you always have two or three warm applicants in the funnel, even when you are not actively hiring. When someone quits, and someone eventually will, you are not starting from zero at midnight. You already know who is next. This is also the piece that lets you actually grow a pet sitting business instead of just staying busy. You cannot grow past what your team can carry. If you are stuck on whether you are even ready, How To Crush the I Am Too Scared To Hire Fear (Ep. 238) is the one to play first. Then 5 High Level Tactics To Increase Your Hiring Speed (Ep. 387), How To Find and Hire 3 Amazing Employees In 2 Weeks (Ep. 302), and How To Attract Multiple Applicants To Your Business (Ep. 290) for the pipeline itself.

W-2 or 1099? The Line I Will Not Move On

W-2, full stop. I have held this stance publicly for over ten years, and I am not going to soften it because it is inconvenient. Pet sitters and dog walkers almost always fail the control test the IRS and most states use to define an independent contractor. You set the schedule, you set the rate, you tell them which house and which dog. That is an employee relationship, whatever the paperwork says.

I did not land on this stance from a blog post. I sat down with a state revenue auditor for an entire interview and asked her, directly, what she actually looks for when she audits a pet sitting company. Listen to that interview here if you want it straight from the person who does the audits, not from someone guessing. The SBA’s guide to hiring and managing employees and the IRS employment tax rules both back the same read. Misclassifying your team is not a paperwork shortcut. It is back taxes, penalties, and a very bad audit waiting to happen. If you are sitting on a roster of ICs right now, my full conversion guide is how to switch your pet sitting ICs to employees, and the case for doing it is laid out in 18 real reasons to make the switch. You want proof this is not theoretical? Read the real ones… an IRS audit that cost an estimated $25,000 and a $60,000 mistake that rattled an entire company structure. Then Staying Compliant With Staff In Your Pet Business (Ep. 177) for how to stay clean going forward.

What to Pay: Jump’s 30/30/40 Method

You cannot hire pet sitters who stay if you cannot afford to pay them right, and you cannot know what you can afford until your pricing is built to support a team. That is where Jump’s 30/30/40 Method comes in. Roughly 30% of every dollar a visit brings in goes to the business, 30% goes to you as the owner, and 40% goes to wages for the person doing the work. If your price cannot clear that split, the price is broken, not the employee too expensive.

I walk through exactly how that math plays out paycheck by paycheck, hourly versus per-visit versus commission, in how should I pay my pet sitting employees. And if pricing itself is the piece you have never nailed down, that is the entire focus of my Pet Sitting Business Pricing Structure and Strategy class. Fix the price first. Everything about hiring gets easier once the wage line actually exists in your rate. Two more pieces people ask me about constantly… whether you owe staff more when you raise your rates, and what a team really costs you once payroll taxes enter the picture. On the podcast, The Ins and Outs of Doing Payroll In Your Business (Ep. 144). And please do not run payroll yourself… here is why.

Employee or Contractor: What Actually Changes on Your Team

What	1099 (misclassified)	W-2 (done right)
Who sets the schedule	You do, which is the problem	You do, legally allowed to
Training you can require	Legally limited	Full structured training, step 9
Audit risk	High, growing every year	Low, correctly filed
Consistency of care	Whatever they decide to do	Your standards, every visit
Retention	Low, no real investment	Higher, they are actually your team

The Bad Apple: What Happens When You Keep the Wrong Hire

There is a moment every owner hits. You realize this person is bad for your company, and then you choose to keep them anyway because firing feels harder than the problem they are causing. After that moment, they are no longer the problem. You are.

A bad apple does not just underperform. They train your good sitters that mediocrity is acceptable, they cost you clients quietly, and they make your best people start updating their resumes. Step 10 of the Method, analyzing and refining, is where you catch this early instead of eighteen months late. Look at your data. If one person is generating most of your complaints, that is not a coincidence you can coach your way out of forever. Two hard questions come next... when do I fire a pet sitting employee, and then how do I actually do it. Before you get there, though, play Staff Members Leave The Manager, Not The Job (Ep. 292) and 4 Ways Employees Take Away Your Power In Your Pet Business (Ep. 350). Sometimes what looks like a bad apple is a management problem. And if you are facing the other nightmare, here is how to make sure your staff are not stealing clients.

Real Receipts: What Changes When You Actually Hire

Mary Simon runs Outdoor Dog Adventures in Louisville, Kentucky. Her words, not mine: "I've hired another employee, raised my prices and I'm just having so much fun." That is what it looks like when pricing and hiring finally work together instead of fighting each other. She is not white-knuckling every visit anymore. She built a team. I have more of these on the podcast. Becky Lea got to 150 applicants a week (Ep. 364), Tiffany Lewis walked through what it takes to hire 50 employees and counting (Ep. 365), and one owner went from solo to a full staff and a personal life in under a year (Ep. 412).

That is the whole point of learning how to hire pet sitters the right way. Not more hustle. A company that can actually carry itself.

Go Deeper: Podcast Episodes on Hiring Pet Sitters

If you want to hear the 10-Step Jump Hiring Method talked through instead of read, here is where to start. All of these are episodes of my podcast, Bella In Your Business.

• 10 Steps To Hiring Great Employees (Ep. 461) is the flagship walkthrough of the Method, start to finish. I also recorded it as a video on YouTube if you would rather watch than listen.
• 10 Steps Jump Hiring Method (Ep. 348) is the earlier deep dive, broken down step by step with timestamps if you want to jump straight to one phase of the Method.
• Your Summer Hiring Window Is Closing (Ep. 466) for what to do this week if you are hiring during a busy season instead of planning ahead.
• Tips For Hiring Pet Sitters For The Holidays (Ep. 454) if your hiring crunch always seems to hit around the holidays.
• How to Stop High Employee Turnover in Your Pet Business (Ep. 255) for what happens after the hire, when retention becomes the real fight.
• How To Decrease Turnover and Create Raving Employees (Ep. 251) is the one where I called the labor shortage before it had a name.
• Attracting Great Employees for Your Pet Sitting or Dog Walking Business (Ep. 431) if applicants are simply not showing up.

More on hiring, straight from the archive

• The interview itself: how to have successful pet sitting interviews every time and how to stop asking the wrong interview questions.
• Managing the team you already have: overcoming problems with pet sitting employees, enforcing the rules after training, and promoting from within versus hiring from the outside.
• Keeping people: 5 holiday gift ideas for your staff and why a smaller staff can save you thousands.
• Insurance and compliance: what happens if you are audited for workers compensation and 7 real workers comp claims from pet sitting businesses.
• What it costs, honestly: what it costs to create your employee manual and the common problems nobody warns you about

Frequently Asked Questions About How to Hire Pet Sitters

How do I hire pet sitters for my pet sitting business?

Run every hire through the 10-Step Jump Hiring Method. Define your ideal candidate, write an ad that reads like a love letter instead of a job posting, add knockout questions that filter out the wrong people before you ever pick up the phone, then interview, offer, onboard, and train on purpose. Hiring pet sitters for your team is a system, not a gut call.

Should pet sitting employees be W-2 or 1099?

W-2, full stop. I have held this stance publicly for over ten years, backed by a full episode I recorded sitting down with a state revenue auditor. Pet sitters and dog walkers almost always fail the control test the IRS and most states use for independent contractors, and misclassifying them can cost you back taxes, penalties, and a very bad audit.

How much should I pay a pet sitting employee?

Run your pricing through Jump's 30/30/40 Method first... 30% of every visit to the business, 30% to you as the owner, and 40% to wages. If that split does not clear, your price is too low to support a hire, not your employee too expensive. Fix the price, then set the wage.

When should I hire my first pet sitting employee?

Before you are desperate, not after. Always Be Hiring means you keep a pipeline running year-round instead of scrambling the week you are already double-booked. Desperate hiring is exactly how a bad apple gets onto your team.

What is the 10-Step Jump Hiring Method?

It is my full hiring system, split into two phases: five steps to build the system before you ever post a job (define your ideal candidate, write the ad, set your non-negotiables, build a phased process, and systematize your scoring), then five steps to hire and onboard the right person (interview prep, an exciting offer, inspiring onboarding, structured training, and reviewing your data to refine it). I built it after twelve years of hiring my own pet sitting team.

How do I keep good pet sitters from quitting?

Retention starts before day one, not after. An inspiring onboarding and real structured training, steps 8 and 9 of the Method, are what separate a pet sitter who stays a year from one who ghosts after three weeks. Keep reviewing your data in step 10 to see exactly where people drop off, then fix that specific gap.

What is a red flag to watch for when hiring a pet sitter?

Anyone who will not sit through your full phased process is telling you something. A candidate who skips steps, dodges your non-negotiable questions, or cannot commit to your onboarding timeline is showing you the same behavior they will bring to a client's home. Screen for it now, not after they have a key to someone's house.

Your Next Move

You already know how to do the visits yourself. Hiring pet sitters who actually stay is a different skill entirely, and it is a learnable one. Define the candidate, write the ad, set your non-negotiables, build the phased process, score it, interview like a detective, make the offer an event, onboard on purpose, train for real, then analyze and refine. Ten steps. Run in order, every time.

If you want this built with you instead of guessing your way through another bad hire, that is exactly what we do inside the Jump Mastermind. Come build the team you can actually trust. Always keep jumping.