How to hire a pet sitter: what to require, what to pay, where to find candidates and how to screen

BLS describes pet sitters as workers who look after animals while the owner is away, typically feeding, walking and playing with pets daily in the owner's home. Experienced sitters may also bathe, groom or train pets.

That definition is the floor. What you actually need depends on the services you sell, so list them first. Drop-in visits, dog walks, cat playtime, puppy care, feeding and pet transport lean on reliability, while overnights in the client's home or boarding in the sitter's own home add home-security judgment on top. Fetch! Pet Care describes exactly that spread across its walkers and sitters, with some locations offering boarding in the sitter's home and overnight care in the client's home.

Our career guide on what a pet sitter does covers the job from the sitter's side. This page stays on yours — the four requirements worth screening for:

• Trustworthiness with home access. Keys, alarm codes and unsupervised time in a client's house are the job. Screen references for showing up before you weigh any credential line.
• A medication line you set before the hire. Decide whether you take pill-only clients only, or also handle injections such as insulin. Our research did not establish whether a lay pet sitter may legally give injections, so decide your own line, write it into your client forms and sitter training, and follow the owner's veterinarian's directions for anything you accept.
• Availability that matches when clients travel. If evenings, weekends and holidays carry your calendar, a candidate whose availability matches them is worth more than a marginally stronger resume.
• Client communication. Your sitters are your brand in the client's living room — updates, arrival and departure notes, and the judgment to call you when something is off.

Pet Sitters International, the trade association behind the CPPS credential, describes pet sitting as a "largely unregulated industry," and that shapes how you screen: the checkable things are references, demonstrated animal experience and judgment, not a license lookup. Your business's own operating obligations are separate and depend on your state and city — our state-by-state pet business license guide covers what pet businesses file, and those agencies are the ones to confirm with.

Formal requirements are modest by O*NET's read of the occupation. It places animal caretakers — the occupation that includes pet sitters — in Job Zones 1 and 2, with on-the-job training ranging from a few days to a year. In O*NET's education survey, 64% of respondents said a new hire needs a high school diploma or equivalent. That survey covers all animal caretakers, from kennels to zoos, so read it as a signal rather than a sitter-specific rule.

The credentials below are voluntary credentials from private bodies — exams, courses and memberships, not state licenses. Ask for them as preferences:

• CPPS — Certified Professional Pet Sitter (PSI). Open only to Pet Sitters International members, with no required course and a standard application fee of $275 (October 2026). The exam is 100 multiple-choice and true/false questions within 3 hours, monitored by a proctor of the candidate's own choosing or by automated online proctoring. Passing takes 80%, and holders keep the credential with 30 CEUs every three years plus current PSI membership; a retest costs $85. PSI says the exam covers pet care; health, sanitation and safety including basic pet first aid; and business operations.
• CPACP — PACCC Provider level. The Professional Animal Care Certification Council's Provider certification covers people who handle animals daily in pet sitting, dog walking, boarding, daycare and grooming settings.
• Pet first aid. The American Red Cross runs a 35-minute online Cat & Dog First Aid course with a digital certificate, and Pet Tech's PetSaver class is 8 hours with a handbook, certificate and wallet card. Either gives a sitter a baseline; our research found no rule requiring either.
• Fear Free. Pet sitter membership costs $229 per person and renews at $59 a year (October 2026 standard pricing), and the Fear Free pet sitter course carries 6 hours of PACCC continuing-education credit.

One credential pays a direct business dividend: PSI says CPPS holders get a 15% discount on pet-sitter liability insurance and bonding premiums through its US preferred provider — useful if you insure and bond your team. Verify any credential by asking for the certificate itself, and treat "certified" on a resume as the start of the question, not the answer.

Decide the structure before the number. Structure options for a pet sitting company include per-visit rates for drop-ins and walks, per-night rates for overnights and in-home boarding, and hourly pay for long blocks of care.

Whatever you choose, the wage floor does not move: the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour (effective July 24, 2009, and still current as of October 2026), and where your state sets a higher minimum you must pay the higher rate. Per-visit pay also has a mechanical trap — time you know about is time you owe for. Under DOL's hours-worked rule, work the employer suffers or permits counts as work time even when it was not requested, so track visits and hours instead of assuming the visit is the whole job.

For a market anchor, the government wage series we can cite is BLS's, and pet sitters have no line of their own: they fall inside animal caretakers (SOC 39-2021), the occupation that also includes groomers, bathers, kennel and daycare attendants and dog walkers. In the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, animal caretakers (includes groomers) earned a national median of $17.00 an hour ($35,360 a year), with the 10th percentile at $13.10 and the 90th at $24.07, across 266,910 wage-and-salary jobs. That figure is payroll workers only — the self-employed are not in it — and it covers the whole occupation, not pet sitters alone.

We publish no typical per-visit or per-night rate — none of the sources we checked sets one. Set yours from your service mix, your costs and your local market, then compare the labelled tables in our pet sitter pay data before you post a number.

Start with who already sits. Pet Sitters International says the majority of its membership is sole-proprietor pet-sitting businesses founded by people who moved over from other careers, naming education, business and medical or veterinary support backgrounds.

BLS's Employment Projections add context for the whole occupation: of 365,300 animal caretaker jobs in 2025 (pet sitters included, self-employed counted), 24.8% were self-employed. The projections grow the occupation 12.1% to 409,400 jobs by 2035, with about 62,800 openings a year over 2025–35.

That points to two pools to recruit from: career changers who want animal work with flexible hours, and people already working in kennels, daycares, shelters and vet clinics who might prefer home-based visits. Post where those people look, and say the schedule, the service mix and the pay structure in the ad itself. Our hiring for grooming and pet care businesses hub links the role hiring guides, and you can post a pet sitter opening to the board's grooming and pet care audience directly.

Referrals work too, with one caution from the EEOC: word-of-mouth recruiting by a workforce that is mostly one ethnicity can violate federal anti-discrimination law if nearly all your new hires end up that same ethnicity. Pair referrals with public postings.

It also helps to borrow an established operator's pitch. Fetch! Pet Care hires walkers and sitters through its local franchise owners — applicants apply online and interview with the local owner — and tells candidates the office books the appointments and provides insurance. Steady bookings and back-office support are the parts of that pitch worth borrowing.

Run the screen in four passes: interview, references, background check, then a paid trial visit.

Keep interview questions to what shows whether the person can do the job. EEOC guidance says pre-employment questions should be limited to what is essential to judge qualification, and questions about race, sex, national origin, age or religion can be used as evidence of discriminatory intent unless the question is justified by a business purpose. Do not ask for a photo with the application either — the EEOC says identification photos belong after an offer is accepted.

Scenario questions beat biography questions in this trade. How a candidate talks through a dog that growls over its food bowl, a client who asks for off-leash walks against your policy, or an open gate at a fenced yard tells you more than a credential line. If you use a working test, the EEOC requires it to be necessary and related to the job, and to screen out no protected group or applicants 40 and over, unless the exclusion is based on a reasonable factor other than age.

Background checks fit a job built on house keys, and the process has federal steps. Before ordering a background check — a consumer report — from a screening company, the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires a written, stand-alone notice and the applicant's written permission. Declining an applicant because of the report has its own steps: a pre-adverse action notice with the report and a copy of "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act," then an adverse action notice after you act. The FTC adds that some states restrict employers' use of consumer reports, so check yours.

Finish with a trial visit to one of your own clients, or a friend-of-the-business pet: one supervised hour shows handling, punctuality and client communication at once. DOL's hours-worked rule counts work the employer knows about as work time even when it was not requested — a rule written for employees, and our research found no DOL guidance on candidate trial visits specifically. The safe read is to pay trial time from the start; confirm the treatment with the Wage and Hour Division.

One decision to make before the first booking, not after: whether this person is an employee or an independent contractor. DOL's Fact Sheet #13 weighs factors including how integral the work is to the business, the permanency of the relationship, the worker's investment in facilities and equipment, and your control. A signed contractor agreement does not settle it. The EEOC notes independent contractors sit outside the anti-discrimination laws it enforces, and that deciding whether someone is really a contractor is complicated. Confirm the classification with the DOL's factors, your state labor agency or counsel before you scale a contractor model.

Sitters work unsupervised in clients' homes, so onboarding is where your standards either transfer or do not. One established operator shows the pattern: Fetch! Pet Care gives hires an orientation to its standards, says the office books appointments and provides insurance, and starts new walkers with few assignments so they build a clientele over time.

A written sitter kit carries the rest. At minimum:

• Access and lockup. How keys and codes are stored, what gets locked on the way out, who holds spares.
• Medication directions. Your policy from the first section, plus the owner's and veterinarian's written directions for every animal on medication.
• Emergency numbers. The client's vet, the nearest emergency vet, and the ASPCA Animal Poison Control line, (888) 426-4435, in every sitter's phone before the first solo visit.
• Incident protocol. What the sitter documents, when they call the client, when they call you.
• A safety valve. A sitter who feels unsafe with a pet needs an out — Fetch! Pet Care says a walker or sitter with safety concerns about a pet can have it reassigned.

If retention is the worry, start with scheduling economics: clustered routes, honest booking forecasts, and pay that rises with reliability are the levers to pull before perks. Coverage is part of the pitch too, not just protection — Fetch tells its own applicants that it provides insurance. Our pet sitter insurance guide covers liability, bonding and lost-key coverage types if you are building that package.

If you are still building the business around the hire — entity, contracts, pricing, software — our pet sitting business startup guide covers the owner side. This page stays on the hire.

Employer information, not legal, tax or insurance advice: confirm classification and wage questions with the DOL's Wage and Hour Division or your state labor agency, background-check steps with counsel, and licensing questions with your state and local agencies.