I’ve been paying $50/day when someone stays in our house with our dog. Our dog is super-easy, 2-3 walks a day otherwise she just likes to lie around. The people who have done this for me are pretty close friends.
I could easily justify paying more than that, FWIW. Places that offer dog boarding nearby charge $50+ per day, and with somebody staying here I get the added benefit of somebody watching my place.
Another factor here is: is your dog a lot of work? A giant puppy that needs constant attention, exercise, and maintenance is different from a 20 pound snoozer who wants to go to the bathroom and curl up with you while you watch TV.
I’m with you guys. I pay $50 a night which seems like the perfect balance of value for both parties. My dog is 11 and sleeps all day so it’s not a lot of work. My other buddy who lives in Texas just dog sat 2 puppies for 4 nights and the couple didn’t pay a cent. Seemed whack. I told him he was getting taken advantage of.
Cash would be a bit odd imo but I can understand spending $50 on a thankyou gift.
Why do you think it’s odd? They are giving up 4 days to stay at my place and take care of an animal. They should be paid for their time even if we are friends.
How close a friend I guess is the question. I wouldn’t do this for someone who wasn’t a super close friend, there’s basically one or possibly two people I know who I would do it for, so if I did it I wouldn’t expect payment just like if I help a friend move house I wouldn’t want payment (though some duty free or something from their destination would be nice). If you’re not that close and you’re essentially hiring them instead of hitting up craigslist or whatever that’s definitely different.
I get what you’re saying, but you just say “hey, this would be costing me x$ if I was boarding the dog or hiring some random housesitter, so I definitely want you to have this money as a thank-you” and that’s that.
May well be a cultural thing. I can imagine america is more openly transactional in general (see tipping). We prefer to still pretend our personal interactions aren’t fully monetised activities.
My old neighbors watch my dog and I watch theirs. Gave her about a half oz to watch her this trip for 13 days. Longest I will have been without her.
We almost always just have our dog’s dog walkers take her when we go on vacation (when we used to go on vacation). They charge about $50 per night and our dog loves it, she feels comfortable with her walkers and also our dog walkers are mostly younger folks trying to get by in an expensive city. They’re happy for the extra income and we’re happy to pay it. One other benefit to the dog walkers - nobody wants to think about it, but our dog walkers are all trained in dog first aid and are adept at managing dogs safely in a public setting. So there is a certain safety benefit of sending the dog to stay with “pros” instead of well meaning friends.
My roommate watches dogs for her friends for $30 a day, and charges her boss $80 a day to watch 2 dogs when does he goes out of town. When my roommates goes out of town and leaves their 2 dogs behind, I watch them for free.
It’s your friend not a dogsitter. Friends do favors for each other.
I mean at least at least that’s what my friend said when we had to drop off a package in the middle of the desert. Weird place for a delivery.
I think this comes down to the quality of friend. I wouldn’t pay my best friend but I would pay my sort of friend that is also doing me a favor. Interesting poll though.
Turning a relationship into the sum of discrete transactions seems excessively capitalistic to me.
Don’t think I’ve ever been paid to watch someone’s dog and i wouldn’t really want to be unless it was a devil dog I guess. But in that case I just wouldn’t watch it. We’ve received some small gifts but I can’t remember ever getting cash. My parents or my in laws usually watch ours and we don’t pay them anything, they wouldn’t have any of that if we tried.
It’s insulting to pay a friend for doing you a favor. Give them a gift or just return the favor next time they need something.
If anyone needs a dogsitter, feel free to mail your dog to me. I’m happy to help out.
Finland’s objectively hot prime minister did not socially distance while clubbing until 4am, this is what qualifies as a scandal in Finland
If Joe Biden did that it would be a pretty big scandal tbh.