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Do you charge long-distance?

I have a potential client who wants me to do drop in visits for her 5 dogs and 2 cats, over the Christmas holiday. She lives approximately 20-25 minutes away from me.

I'm struggling with deciding how to charge this person. The dogs would need to be visited 3 times a day at minimum, and that's for the bare basics of feeding and potty. Added up, the drive time alone would take 4 hours out of my day. I want to be fairly compensated for my time, but I also think it's silly to charge somebody $1500 for a one-week stay, you know what I mean?
Do you do any "long-distance" drop in visits, and how do you charge?

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I charge an extra $5 for jobs over 20 miles. I live in rural/small town Iowa and I get maybe half my requests over the 20 mile mark. If it were 3 drop-in visits that far away, I would just charge my overnight fee and stay there.

Fawn B.

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Sarah B.

I don't because I only operate within a 5 mile radius which makes things simpler. I think things get much more complicated when you start to travel more and more. Not worth it for me. Can you let this one go or do you need the job? Sounds like there's more than enough time for her to find someone who's closer. And do you really want to drive that much over the holidays?

Anyway, that's just my personal take on long distance pet sitting.

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Jessica M.

Thank you for the advice and the answers. I ended up turning this one down. I feel really bad, because we live in a fairly rural area so I really am the only "professional" sitter she can turn to. They run a business and basically have this one chance a year to get away for some family time, so I hate that I can't help them out a little bit.

Long story short, I'm having a baby the second week of December, and their stay is going to be over Christmas break. I would otherwise just drive down there in the morning and stay all day, or even offer to let her board the dogs here at a discount (all 5 of them, plus a cat and two fish). But with a baby in the house, and me not having any idea of how far I'll be post-partum, it's just better for everybody this way.

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Do you charge long-distance?

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