This week, my husband and I are dog sitting Mr. and Miss Chewy for his aunt and uncle.  I love being able to help out like this since my in-laws take care of Mr. Pug and Miss Doxie every time we go on vacation.  I always feel like we never give anything back.  Here are a few tricks of pet sitting that I’ve figured out over the last visit or two:

1)  Compromise.  These two little dachshunds wake up way earlier than the rest of the household, but they seem to have figured that out.  As long as I let them out by 8am on the weekends, they don’t bark at me at 6am like they did and they can go right back to sleep for a few hours afterwards.  I’m usually up for good by 9:30-10am on the weekends anyway, so this system worked well for us.

2)  Patience.  I have learned not to get involved with every little show of dominance between all 4 dogs.  Usually there’s just a little growling and a little snap of a tiny mouth and everything is settled in those few seconds.  It only seems to happen once or twice a day…it’s pretty easy for these dogs to figure out their problems.  It was so fun watching Mr. Pug trying to get Miss Chewy to play yesterday, lol.  There wasn’t any snapping, but Miss Chewy made it very obvious that she was in no mood to play by simply showing her teeth a bit.  Mr. Pug is a complete wussy.

3)  Schedule.  We have a rhythm in our house and once we fit in a few new steps for our guests, everything flows.  Thankfully, both dogs are well-trained and know exactly what is going on, where they need to be to be, and fit in very well with our whole crew.  This has been the easiest visit ever.

Do you have any pet sitting advice?