Ok,many of you know I petsit for a petsitting business. I have been doing it for about 10 yrs. The dogs come here and stay at my house while owners are gone. Anyways, these dogs come with all their own stuff, food,treats toys. Basically I just provide them with a nice house/family to stay with, instead of a cold kennel like at a boarding place.
Ok, I didnt start doing this to pay my mortgage, meaning I started doing this because of my love for dogs, and the fun it was for us.
10 yrs ago, I started working for the original owner of the business, and was getting $5 a day per dog. Ok, not alot of money, but fun money I considered it. About 7yrs ago, the original owner sold the business to another lady. This lady became a good family friend of mine. She is a good hearted/very spiritual person. When she raised the prices, she did it only by a dollar or so, and some old time customers she didnt even raise their price. I was still getting 5$ a dog.. Ok, now the business has been sold again, since Oct.. This new owner(Whom Ive met before as she was also a petsitter)has really redone all the books, got everything in order. She has raised the prices. I mean in all reality, my friend was not charging enough. So one of my customers who was paying the business 13 dollars a day, was raised to 19$ a day, for a large dog. All and all, still a fair price compared to kennels. With all this raising of dog prices, she has not raised the petsitters fees.Dont you all think its only right to raise us as well, since she has increased daily fees for customers. Yes for 10 yrs Ive been working for $5 a dog, but fees really never increased. Now things are different I think.

By Karen~moderator on Monday, January 3, 2005 - 03:51 pm:

Definitely! What are the chances of you starting your own petsitting business???

By Cat on Monday, January 3, 2005 - 03:52 pm:

Does the new owner realize you've been doing this for 10 years without a raise??? I raised my daycare rates for the first time last year--after 5 years. My coordinator on the Air Force base thinks I should raise it once a year like the centers do. Can you talk to the new owner? I really do think you deserve a raise. Even if you're not "In it for the money," you shouldn't be giving your services away either. And shoot, if the owner is getting $19 a day, you should be getting more than $5 of that! Jmho Good luck.

By Jackie on Monday, January 3, 2005 - 04:01 pm:

I totally agree with all of you. The reason I had never brought this up for the 7 yrs my friend owned the business as she has always been so good to me and my family. LIke,she would watch my kids anytime we needed, took my older 2 over night when having the baby. Basically she treated us like family, so asking for a raise never occured to me, as she helped me in so many other ways. Now though, with the new owner(and has only been new owner since Oct)I dont feel the same way. I will be talking to her about it. I have been talking to the other worker,(Rachal)is like her right hand man. She is sweet as can be, has been working for several yrs with the business. I talked to her about it today as she was picking up dogs. I asked about our raise(petsitters raises)she said that the owner had not said anything to her about but she was going to ask when she got back to the office.
About starting my own business. Well me and dh have talked about it. But in reality, I dont want all the headaches that go along with a "real" business. Now with that said, I do watch dogs outside the business(for neighbors)and charge 10$ a day.
Racheal told me that some of the customers were complaining about the raise in prices. I told her that I would happily watch their dogs for 10$ and cut out the middle man. She said if it came down to losing customers, she would happily give them my phone number. The funny thing is that I have met some of the owners and no where they live. I would have no problem going to their house and offering services if it came down to that.

By Jelygu on Monday, January 3, 2005 - 06:06 pm:

I think you deserve a raise also. Good luck getting it!

By Ginny~moderator on Monday, January 3, 2005 - 06:17 pm:

I think you deserve a raise. I would definitely push for a raise, especially as she is charging so much more AND you are getting $10 a day for your own private customers.

If you do decide to go on your own, I would suggest you NOT contact customers of your employer, but if they contact you that is probably a different story, as long as you don't initiate the contact by mail or phone. I would be very careful about contacting existing customers of your employer because you might very well be sued for stealing her customers, and she would have at least a 50/50 chance of winning. And Rachel should also be careful about steering people away from the employer and towards you - it is a sort of dance about who opens the subject, and you should step carefully.