Do you need a car in order to be a dog sitter?

If you offer Boarding, where dogs are brought to your home and picked up from your home - no. Boarding is currently the most requested service on Rover.

All other services require that you go to the client's home... so if the distance is beyond what you can get to on foot, you'd need to find reliable transportation (that may not limit to only having a car - public transportation or ride sharing services may work for you).

As stated above, if you’re boarding in your home, hopefully not...the only time I would think a car might be important would be in case of emergency. Hopefully it never happens, but should you need to get a dog to his vet’s office, or even worse , to an evening emergency clinic, then I think it would be a necessity & possibly a costly mistake not to have one. It’s kind of like insurance...you buy it & hope you never need to use it.

Only once have I done a pickup and a dropoff for a client. Thankfully it didn't become a regular occurance as financially, its not really worth the trouble. Just have them make the arrangements for the pickup and dropoff and don't offer any services that require transportation.

I choose not to own a car, and I love it. I keep my service area within bus-service radius, but clients outside my radius, or on days the bus is closed, can pay $20/visit so I can get Zipcar (hourly rental) or Lyft/Uber, if they want.

For emergencies during boarding, I have a pop-up crate, and if a Lyft/Uber driver can't take the dog and I, at least they can get me quickly to a Zipcar so I can transport the pupper.