Your First Housesit: What to Expect, From Either Side

It’s the first evening. The sitter has unpacked, found the kettle, and is sitting on the kitchen floor because the older dog won’t come out from under the table. The note on the fridge says the dog is friendly. It doesn’t say he hides from new people for a day, then decides you’re all right.

Across town, at a hotel by the airport, the homeowner is writing a message, deleting it, and writing it again. Is it too soon to ask?

Both of them are new to this. Both of them are doing fine. Neither of them knows it yet.

A first sit is mostly made of small unknowns. The sitter doesn’t know the house’s sounds, the animals’ habits, or what the homeowner meant by “keep an eye on the garden”. The homeowner has never handed over the care of the animals they love, and has no idea what a normal amount of worry looks like.

A first-sit wobble usually comes from something that was obvious to one person and never said to the other. The cure is boring and it works: be specific, and say it before the sit.

Meet the animals before you arrive, if you can. Spend time with them while their people are still there. Watch how they’re handled, fed and walked. Know, too, that meeting isn’t the whole picture: an animal can be calm with its people in the room and quite different once they’ve left. Give the first days room.

Ask about the quirks. The dog who barks at the postman. The cat who’s frightened of umbrellas. The one who eats too fast, the one who slips the lead, the one who won’t take a tablet unless it’s wrapped in cheese. Quirks are where the real care lives.

Know what counts as urgent. Ask the homeowner which things need a call straight away, which need the vet, and which can wait for the next update. What’s normal for one animal is a warning for another, and the homeowner knows which is which.

Settle the rhythm. How often they’d like to hear from you, how, and whether they expect a reply. Offer what you can keep on a dull week.

Be specific. “Walk the dog” is vague. “A 30-minute walk morning and evening, on the lead near roads” is clear. The same goes for feeding, medication, where the animals sleep and which doors stay shut.

Write it down. Even if you’ve talked it all through, a sitter will want to check something at ten at night without bothering you. Include the vet, an out-of-hours vet, and someone local who can help.

Introduce your animals properly. Let them spend time with the sitter before you leave, and tell the truth about them. A sitter who knows the dog can be grumpy with other dogs will plan the walk around it. One who doesn’t will find out the hard way.

Then let them get on with it. You chose them. Constant checking in can make a good sitter feel watched rather than trusted.

This part is worth saying on both sides, because first-timers often don’t know where the edges are.

A sitter looks after the animals and the home. They’re not expected to:

• deep clean the house
• do significant DIY or repairs
• run personal errands that have nothing to do with the animals or the home
• be on call round the clock for things that aren’t urgent

If you’d like something beyond the ordinary, like a long list in the garden or a delivery to wait in for, ask before the sit, and accept that the answer might be no. A good sitter will want to know exactly what’s included before they say yes. That’s not fussiness. It’s how first sits go well.

An agreement on Reputable Sitters is built from a handful of questions, each answered from your own side: keeping in touch, cameras indoors, someone drops by, meeting first, getting there, the urgent vet decision and the last morning. For a first sit they’re a useful checklist in their own right, because they’re the things people new to this tend not to think of until they matter.

The agreement writes itself from your answers. One of you proposes, the other answers, each line matches or isn’t matched yet, and either of you can change an answer before you both sign. Once you’ve signed, you can each download a copy.

What the agreement says, if you settle on a basic tidy for the last morning:

The agreement records each animal by name, any bite history, and whether it takes medication. Feeding, walks, the quirks and the “call me if” list go in your notes for the sit, and you talk them through.