My husband and I are home full-time; he as a recent retiree and me as a private cello teacher. Between us, your pet will have all the attention that it needs, as we have the quality time to spend with them without having too many other obligations. Both my husband Charlie and I have had dogs and cats all our life. Charlie actually had a pet-sitting business back when he lived in Indiana 20 years ago. We are currently dogless after losing our beautiful Golden Kody to anemia at 4 years old on 6/20/20. Before adopting Kody, we were providing palliative care to our 17-year-old lab mix Binky who we got as a 1-year-old rescue. He was our trusty camping buddy, guarded us against nefarious squirrels, and was the best man at our wedding. Dealing with an 80 pound dog with very limited mobility was difficult as there was more soiled bedding to wash and tiring 2am potty breaks, but we felt that was the only way to repay a pet that had given so much love through-out his long life. The pain unfortunately got too much for him, so we had him put to sleep in our home on 2/2/18. Over the years we have used a variety of pet sitters and understand what has made them great and at times, what has made them not so great. The two biggest issues we have come across is communication and the understanding of what needs to be done. If we ask for daily updates with pictures(even if all our dog does is sleep and eat), we don't want to have to pester you for this information after two days of hearing nothing. If we ask you to try and keep to our pet's basic schedule and you agree you can, we are not happy when we find out you are showing up 4 hours after our specified time. And if you come to the walk-through before our vacation and take zero notes, I'm already worried. We have experienced what has made us feel nervous about hiring a sitter, so we will make sure to communicate with you as often as you want, agree to stick to schedules we put in place with you, and take copious notes when we arrive so that you can leave and feel confidant that we understand what needs to be done.