Pros
This is a wonderful place if you truly love dogs and cats and don't care at all about pay. You meet some truly wonderful animals and some wonderful pet owners as well; I have made some lasting friendships with a handful of clients that I met on the job. So, if you really love hanging out with dogs and cats all day, and have your own disposable source of income, this is ideal for you. This would be the ONLY scenario in which I would suggest working here, because this is NOT a job that will pay you a decent working wage by any stretch of the imagination.
Cons
Where do I start... 1. The PAY vs. what they charge clients. This is an absolute joke. You are paid on average $7 for a visit that the client is charged upwards of $20 for. You are not paid per hour, but rather per visit. You drive using your own vehicle to these visits and are not reimbursed for gas or distance traveled regardless of how far out of your way you go. 2. House-sitting/ Overnight Stays- a client is charged $90 on a per-night basis for a sitter to stay at their home and care for their pet. The sitter themselves, (you know, the ones who do ALL the work during this stay) are paid a measly $35 per night. Please explain to me how this is fair for the employee who is the one actually caring for the animals when the company pockets $55 per night for, essentially, SCHEDULING the visit. Pathetic. Every client who found out about that pay structure were horrified when I told them. Thankfully the clients are usually so thunderstruck by this highway robbery that they will leave you a good tip. You know, for actually working. 3. Taking employee safety into account- there is none of that. They will send you on visits with scared or improperly trained animals that will attempt to bite you without any warning of what you are walking into. They will brush off your requests not to be sent to visit certain animals and bend the the every whim of demanding pet owners, however damaging they may be to employee doing the visit. 4. Scheduling- you won't know your schedule more than a day in advance, leaving no opportunity for scheduling second jobs or plans outside of work. They demand perfect performance in attendance, meaning that you must begin and end every visit within a time window and if you stray outside of that for any reason (even if the animal required extra care or there was a problem) not only are you not paid for this extra time, but you get REAMED for going over. All this to make a whopping $7. What a joke. 5. AND FINALLY- the "report cards." These are mandatory slips that are left at the end of each visit updating the pet owner on how the visit went and generally what happened during the sitter's time there. It makes sense from every angle until they tell you that no matter what happens on a visit, be it good or bad, you must stay upbeat and positive and say only wonderful things. This includes if the animal was aggressive, or difficult to control, or had explosive diarrhea. You keep the pet owner completely in the dark and lie and say what a fantastic time you had. Supposedly the office staff will reach out to the owners with any real concerns that a sitter might have, but the proof of that was nonexistent, as most problems that I brought up were swept under the rug or never addressed at all.