033- Kitchen Confessions

With the pet industry changing at such a rapid rate, we’re trying something new. We will be releasing shorter conversations that we usually have while sitting in our kitchen. Don’t worry, the longer Wednesday episodes will still be there, with more interviews from pet sitters around the globe. Dubbed “Kitchen Confessions”, these shorter shows will be our take on the latest Covid-19 news and the impact it has on the pet care industry. All of this in an effort to stay more connected with you during this stressful time, and work with you to figure this all out as we go.

Today’s topic:

• Caring for the pets of Covid-19 patients

• Staying safe

• Ethics around staying open vs closing for a time

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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

Provided by otter.ai

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

pet, pet sitter, service, sanitizing, business, walks, provide, sitters, care providers, leash, dog, exposure, client, continuing, discussed, kristen, kristin, question, corona virus, figure

SPEAKERS

Meghan, Collin

Collin  00:17

I'm calling. And I'm Megan. And this is pet sitter confessional,

Meghan  00:21

an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter

Collin  00:24

brought to you by time to pet. Hello, and welcome back to another special Monday episode, Megan and I sometimes have our best conversations down in our kitchen, where we're just kind of flying by the seat of our pants. So we were just doing that want to pause and come up here and hit record to let you in on some of the things that we were discussing and going back and forth on. So it's going to be fairly unedited, and not a lot of format to this. So I hope you enjoy this conversation, as we think through these questions. So Megan, you were saying?

Meghan  00:59

Yes, so Taking care of sick patients packed so a lot of people are getting kovat 19. And they have pets, and who is going to be providing service for them when they are in the hospital? Or? Like if you are the primary pet care provider, and they don't have friends and family around? Are you going to be willing to provide service for their pets? Is that something you're comfortable with or not?

Collin  01:29

I have seen this question come up a couple times in several of our Facebook groups. And it really comes down to assessing your risk factors if you are in one of the groups that is at high risk for this. So if you're in that age bracket of 50 or or more,

Meghan  01:49

if you have asthma, my friend has asthma and she's going to be locked inside for a few weeks.

Collin  01:54

You would absolutely just have to say no to that kind of request. I think some other considerations would be Do you know how to effectively put on and remove personal protective equipment, or sanitize yourself after leaving that situation? If you don't know how to properly remove gloves without further exposure, you need to learn about that and maybe practice before you dive right into that kind of area.

Meghan  02:21

Also sanitizing, sanitizing leashes and anything that you touch if you're going into a home

02:28

where somebody was infected.

Meghan  02:29

Yeah, I know people have been meeting dogs outside and you and the pet sitter is using their own leash versus using the client's leash to decrease contamination as much as possible and then sanitizing the leash in between dog visits.

Collin  02:46

So using your own leash, not using the owner's leash to do the walk at that point. The other thing that I think comes up with this is right regulations and laws. Currently, they're constantly changing. But when your city or your state goes on shelter in place, what does that mean? I think each state has different ideas of what an essential versus non essential business is.

Meghan  03:12

Yeah. I mean, just Friday night, New York, had said the governor of New York had said that pet care businesses are in the essential group. And then Saturday morning, he came in and said, No, they're not. So it's just pet shelters that are now under that umbrella.

Collin  03:29

So if you just legally cannot operate, you would have to tell your clients, no, I'm not allowed to and again, how enforceable it is or isn't, and how, again, your risk factor of continuing to provide service when you're not technically allowed to? I don't know. I really don't I think that that is the open ended question as far as what those rules are, how far they extend and the level that they're going to be enforced.

Meghan  03:55

It's really what you're comfortable with though everybody it's it seems like people have Very strong opinions about this. Some people have just some pet care businesses have just completely shut their doors, because they don't want to risk any kind of contamination and other pet sitters are still and pet sitters and dog walkers are still doing walks because they need to pay the bills. And that's just what they've are. That's what they're, they're okay with.

Collin  04:23

Yeah, we as a business are really at this intersection of needing to interact with people to make money and now being told to stay away from people and legally not being allowed to interact in many cases. So how do we or do we even try? And then that ethical and moral question of, am I morally Okay, continuing to go out and interact and have some level of interaction knowing that I could possibly be contributing to the further spread and duration of this pandemic?

Meghan  04:55

Right. That's one of the questions is should we stop all services To respect isolation, and not everybody's going to agree on that, no, there's going to be people from all sides.

Collin  05:06

And we've seen again, I've seen the gamut of people making mention of as, as soon as this came out, people went, well, I need to do my part. And I'm closing business. That way. There's no risk of transference or exposure to not just me, but me continuing to be chatting it to other people as well. The other side of that coin is, okay, sure, that's all fine and dandy, but there are healthcare professionals out there that have pets that are still going to work. I need service people who are in a quote unquote, essential businesses that needs service for their pets continuing that and that is such a personal question. I would personally lean towards continuing to provide service in a very select Continue to provide service to to a very select group of people, if they were first responders, if they Healthcare workers, I would provide service to them,

Meghan  06:03

and maybe do so in a more limited fashion. So, say you say you want to do a drop in check, and you normally, you know, stay for 45 minutes and sit on the couch and play with the dog and throw toys back and forth. Maybe try to do something that's more outside where you're not touching all of the touching as many of the clients items.

Collin  06:31

Or if you were formally providing boarding services, whether in a facility or in your own home, made not offer that don't have people coming in and out constantly meeting them in the front yard meeting on the front yard or switching over to do one on one walks only, where instead of doing pack walks, you are going to that person's house, meeting them outside or going inside to get the dog and coming out. We're using all of your own equipment that you say ties later, going for a walk and then letting the dog back end and then that's it. And in really being creative and and how we continue to provide, maybe not the same service but a service, while knowing that we have to do our part to limit the transference of this.

Meghan  07:21

So if you decide to stop all services, to kind of respect the isolation, this some people have commented, should I, I kind of feel guilty about that? And I don't think you should, I, I think that it's whatever. It's up to you how you want to run your business or not during this time. And if you feel that the best care that you can provide right now is not to provide care because of the risk of not only to your client, but to many people that you had potentially come in contact with them. You should not feel guilty about that at all.

Collin  08:02

They were saying that across the board with other businesses, too. I'm sure you are all well aware of restaurants and other small businesses in your area that have gone and said, You know what, for right now, we're closing down for the foreseeable future or for the next two weeks, we're just hitting a pause on this to reassess. That's an excellent business decision. If, if you are trying to help limit the exposure, that's what you need to do. That's a really tough decision,

Meghan  08:29

though. And I don't know if I would say that's excellent, because they're not they still have bills to pay like they

Collin  08:35

pay more morally. That's you've got to follow what your compass there. And we all need to figure out what our role is. In this public health crisis. It's public, meaning everybody can do something. If you're still offering services, there are things you can do to limit exposure, you know, hand washing wearing gloves, sanitizing everything all the time, not doing pack walks, doing pack walks, not going and doing large boardings, those kind of things,

Meghan  09:08

doing drop in checks versus house setting.

Collin  09:10

It could also be stopping service, depending on where you are, financially, what the legal requirements are for your state or city and assessing those and, and as always being flexible and maybe you can't offer walks maybe you can't offer. Morning. can you offer poop scooping? can you offer food delivery things that we've discussed and are being discussed ongoing? You know, what kind of things can you do online. And that's where everybody is, at this moment. Those were the three topics that Meg and I were discussing down in our kitchen and we hope you've enjoyed this kind of off the cuff moment for us. We are still planning on having our full episode on Wednesday. We have Kristin Morrison on with us

Meghan  09:57

who has really been a huge resource during this This time, she is organizing a community group online, where many pet business owners are coming together to have kind of a brainstorming session on what to do during this time.

Collin  10:12

Now, the recording with Kristin was recorded before the global outbreak of the corona virus and Cova 19. However, a lot of the business the talk is really limited. And we found out a lot more the discussion focuses a lot more on on who Kristen is and things that she's learned from being in business as long as she has. It was a great conversation with Kristen and I hope you guys join us. If you're not part of our Facebook group, please join. There's so much going on in there and a lot of help from other sitters as we come together and figure out ways to still be pet care providers and still provide service during this time. It's sitter confessionals on Facebook.

Meghan  10:48

We hope that you know, wherever you are in the world that we support you that there is a community working to figure this out. And we as the pet care providers are going to come back stronger And we are going to fight this