482: Dirty Clients, Clean Answers
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How do you manage when a client's home is more than just messy? We dive into the challenging world of hoarding and its impact on our business as pet sitters and dog walkers. We explore what hoarding really entails and how it creates unsafe and unhealthy working conditions. From navigating privacy issues to ensuring the safety of the pets and maintaining professional boundaries, we cover the essential strategies for approaching these sensitive situations with gentleness and genuine concern. Join us as we provide practical advice to help you handle even the most difficult environments effectively.
Main topics
What is hoarding?
When do you say something?
What are your moral and ethical obligations?
When do you report?
Main takeaway: Out of love and concern for the client and their pet, speak up and let them know you’re not ok with the conditions of the home.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
client, pets, hoarding, pet sitters, conditions, pet, impacts, home, situation, dirty, require, care, receptive, visits, ultimately, years, confessional, unsanitary conditions, decide, speak
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Oh hello, welcome to pet sitter confessional. I'm Meghan.
Collin 00:05
I'm Collin.
Meghan 00:06
We'd like to thank pet sitters associates for sponsoring this episode and our Patreon people. Whoo. If you've enjoyed some of the episodes and would like to help support as well, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support. This
Collin 00:17
year, the Florida Pet Services Association is putting on their summit held August 22 through the 24th. And I'm really excited that I'm going to be getting to speak at the summit, all about fear how it is a driving force, how it is a unifying force, and how we have to make sure that it doesn't stop us from doing all the cool stuff that we want to do hope to see a lot of familiar faces there. So check out the Florida Pet Services Association to learn more.
Meghan 00:42
We've had a question in our queue for a while now. So we wanted to approach this with a lot of grace. And it's what you do when a potential client or an existing client is a hoarder or lives in a home that is extraordinarily dirty. This does happen from time to time, hopefully, in your business. It's a very rare occurrence. But this topic is one that we need to treat with empathy with understanding, and ultimately professionalism, because it is a very sensitive topic when you're discussing this with clients or just dealing with this situation. So this conversation is broadly about very dirty homes. But we also want to have a talk about hoarding. Specifically, hoarding is really a mental disorder. And it's characterized by an individual's inability to discard items, which leads to clutter that ultimately disrupts their ability to use their living or workspaces. It really does have psychological roots like anxiety, depression, traumatic behavior, or past experiences that can really contribute to this hoarding behavior. There are sometimes unfortunately impacts on pets. A lot of times there's impacts on people living in the home the smells, or the odors, but it can really impact pets as well who live in unsanitary conditions. If people aren't scooping litter boxes, it can lead to unsanitary conditions, and it affects the health and well being of the animals. Pets in hoarding situations may be exposed to infections or parasites or other health issues due to accumulated waste or lack of clean water or improper storage, which could lead to some behavioral issues. This clutter and confinement the inability to really move around or get out there energy of the pets can lead to stress and anxiety, which results in maybe aggression or fearfulness, or destructive behavior. Pets in these types of situations don't usually get regular veterinary care or grooming. They lack a lot of attention in hoarding homes, which can exacerbate the health problems and diminish their overall quality of life. There are varying degrees of a hoarding situation, I know that a lot of them are displayed on TV, they're the worst case scenarios. But in pretty much all cases, you really need to handle this with tact.
Collin 02:54
And it's going beyond something that's just dirty, or maybe a little cluttered, it really is impacting the client, the pet or your ability to live or work inside the home. And as we have this conversation, some of us breaks down to when do you become knowledgeable of this going on in the client's home? Obviously, if it's before, or maybe after a meeting with him your first initial consultation, this will change how you engage, right? This is why it's so critical, so important to meet in the client's home before you start care. It's not just about whether they want a dog walk and we can do a dog walk. It's about a holistic approach to understanding who is this person that are going to be hiring me and I'm going to be working with what is their home? Like? Do I feel safe there? Is it is it healthy for me to be there. Because after that initial consultation, you can always say, after careful consideration, this is not going to be a good fit, best of luck to you and your search for pet care. And you leave it at that. And that's all you need to say. However, if it's an existing client who has living situations who are starting to deteriorate, and they're starting to get worse, then that's when we have to decide how do we have that conversation with them. And always throughout this focusing on the well being of the pets and maintaining a non judgmental tone. Even something like hey, I've noticed that fluffy seems uncomfortable in the cluttered spaces in the kitchen. And I think kind of clearing that up might help her feel better. But what we have to do here is support clients and seeking help like providing information on cleaning services, mental health resources, and again focusing on the benefit to the pets because we don't want to judge the person for the condition. We do want to as professional pet sitters as professional dog walkers. We can speak to the impact that it's having on the pet and encourage them to address it from that angle.
Meghan 04:48
The conversation that you may or may not have with them will be also determined by the relationship that you've had. If you've this is your very first time meeting them. You're probably going to use very soft gentle language versus Somebody who's been a client for five or more years that, again, you've seen their house deteriorating over that time and have noticed things here and there that are now building up when you've had a longer relationship with that person you can talk to and speak to more of the concerns that you've had and the changes that you've noticed over that time. But
Collin 05:17
if you do decide to say something, you have to be ready for for blowback. Because true hoarding, this is a mental illness. As Megan mentioned earlier, and many people have a lot of pent up emotions around this, they're very sensitive about this topic, and they might not even see a problem with what's going on. And if they have unprocessed trauma, if they are not working on their depression, or not working towards managing their anxiety, they're not likely to be receptive of us, no matter how we put it. And this has actually happened to us recently, we had to send out this letter, we actually got a version of this from Karen Levy. So thank you, Karen, for this format, but it reads, we hope this email finds you well, this is a really hard email for us to write, we value you and appreciate the support you've given us. Unfortunately, the condition of your home is such that we can't provide service for this upcoming request in the past or staff have commented on how difficult it is for them to be there. If circumstances change, we'll be happy to provide service again, we don't know if mourning is an option for this next trip. But there are two cat centric businesses that we recommend. We visited both places and think their setup didn't have pretty amazing services for the cats. We hope you understand the position we're in, we know this will be a huge inconvenience for you. And we also worry about how this email will be received by you. We don't want you to feel judged. We know how much you love your pets. And it's clear to us that you take great care of them. We really hate being in this position, but we can't commit to doing the visits you need. And given the concerns of our team as raised, we can't send them in, we care about you. And if there's anything we can do to be helpful for you, or provide you for some resources, please let us know. We're so sorry. We sent that email, and we got ripped up one side and down the other, the person that he had to send this to it was not receptive for this. And we just as a business had to let it go and walk away from the situation. Unfortunately, the client has to be ready to acknowledge the situation and admit to what's going on when we speak up. And from our perspective, it can be really frustrating to not have things received as they were sent, write it with love and with genuine concern for the person and their pets. But ultimately, we have to also recognize we are a business, what is the scope of us as a business? What is our responsibility, and that is exactly why this conversation gets so tricky to have because we want to help people so much. It's just hard to do when we're not in a position really to do that as their pet sitters and dog walkers. And they might not be receptive of us in ready to make some changes in their lives.
Meghan 07:50
It really is a decision tree of what you are comfortable with. And then ultimately, what your team is comfortable with as well. There's no single thing like two bags of spilled cat litter is okay. But three is out of the question. There's no like one single thing that may be the ultimate deciding factor. But maybe an accumulation of things of not only was the kitchen dirty, but the bathroom was just completely unusable and inexcusable for the condition that it was in or they I there was a stench from the back of the house. But they told me not to go in there. And I was just I'm not comfortable with that. For me, it's been in places with too much clutter. It's very overwhelming, it's hard for me to work in what
Collin 08:32
Megan mentioned, you mentioned earlier about smells, that is something that I'm extremely sensitive to, I find it really hard to work in places that smell bad or have an overpowering stench. So I have to remove myself from those places. Well, and in the situation where we had to send that letter to the client, it was a combination of both of these things. Not only were the stuff everywhere, there was no open service, it was all covered in things including aspects on the floor, and making you mentioned in the sink, it was piled up high. And then there was an odor on top of that of something or lots of little things smelled and it was really difficult to be in that situation. So again, understanding what are you personally sensitive to what is overwhelming to you, and making that judgment call?
Meghan 09:17
Well, and I think the key point here is that at the meet and greet that we did, because we do require made great, it was not that bad. So she the client, I believe tidied up or had a better present presentation of her home during the meet and greet then we had walked into weeks later. And that's I think that's the clear point here is that just because you go into a mean great doesn't mean that you're a scot free. Sometimes you're going to have to deal with the ramifications of a client cluttering up their house or having it excessively dirty or bugs in there or whatever it's going to be when it's been four months since the meet and greet.
Collin 09:54
So this decision falls into two categories. Is it safe for me? And is it safe for the pet? That's and making that judgment call. Because you may have to decide, can I can I equip myself with things or tools and stuff to get through this, or maybe it's not worth it at all? Right, maybe if you're working with an existing client who's trying to make a situation better, you might decide to continue caring for their pets to help support the client through that. So you may need to make sure that you have a mask, or gloves or change of clothes or things like that. But ultimately, if that's still not enough, you may have to decide to stop providing care.
Meghan 10:31
It gets a bit more complicated when you have employees because you have to take in their feelings and their considerations as well. Do you feel okay sending them into the situation? Do they have the necessary gear to be comfortable, you should ask each employee individually for kind of their comfort level and have frank conversations with them about what they're okay with. And if there is a client that you are currently servicing, and they speak up and they say, Hey, we're, we're not I'm not comfortable. This is outside of the boundaries of, of what I'm willing to do for this job. You need to listen to them and potentially, you take over the visits for them so that they don't have to do it anymore. Somebody that's never messy is business insurance. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com.
Collin 11:44
A question that does come up through this thought process is Do I have any legal responsibilities in these situations that we as business owners and pet professional pet sitters and dog walkers, we do have an obligation to ensure the safety and well being of the pets under our care. And this extends to taking reasonable steps to prevent harm that might come from hazardous conditions. In these hoarding environments. You need to check with your jurisdiction where you live your city town your county to see whether we are legally required to report severely neglected or abused animals, including these kinds of hoarding situations that are going to have direct impacts on health and safety of them. So it's important that you understand your local laws about reporting their animal welfare concerns. And we'd recommend that you go talk to your local authorities, your local animal control right now, before you get yourself into a situation like this and ask them what to look for, or maybe how they've handled situations like this in the past.
Meghan 12:39
And regardless of the situation is hoarding or not, we should be aware of and adhere to any specific terms outlined in our service agreements. That's why we have those things in there and to stick to it. That might be relating to handling conditions in client's homes. If you don't have a section in your contract about this, you may need to add it in there, you may find the conditions of the home unacceptable. So you may have to do the already agreed upon visits for the booking and then turn down subsequent requests. Or it may be necessary to include that clause in your contract that addresses the limits of their responsibilities and the conditions under which you might refuse service or require intervention. Focus on your health and well being though because if you were not able to do the visits, if you're not able to walk into another client's house after this one without feeling disgusting, or having a stench about you, then it is important to take a step back and talk about the ethical considerations of this and think about those. Ethically, we face the challenge of respecting our client's privacy while also prioritizing the welfare of the pets, the pets are our priority. And they need to be treated with the utmost respect. When we decide on when and how to report neglectful conditions. It really involves weighing the confidentiality against the need to act in the best interest of the animals. And as
Collin 13:52
we already mentioned, it's really important that we approach these kinds of situations without judgment, regardless of its whether if it's a hoarding, or whether it's just conditions that we are we find unacceptable. You strive to understand the complexities of the lives of people and understand that they may be battling mental health issues, or unresolved trauma or a busy lifestyle, and focus on how we can assist both the pets and their owners through this. We do have a role as being advocates for the pets in our care, first and foremost. And sometimes this does require us to take actions like recommending professional services or more intense intervention. And again, that pet owner might initially resist that. But we know that we have done what we need to do by bringing it to their attention. Well,
Meghan 14:35
and generally, you can tell if this is a prolonged condition, if somebody has dealt with this for years and years, or it may just be very recent. I know
Collin 14:42
what training aspects that we go through with all of our employees. And it's something that Megan and I have thought a lot about as we've been in the business for coming up on 13 years now is really the privacy of a client. And in general we talked to our employees about as long if it doesn't impact the The health of the pet or your ability to do the work, we're going to ignore it. And that's not our place, it's out of our purview, outside of our scope of being there for their pets, we have to keep that in mind of being discreet, be respectful of a client's privacy at all times. But again, only when it stays away from what we're actually trying to do. And it impacts our ability to be in that client's home, when it impacts the health of the pet or our safety. That's when this becomes an issue. And it is hard to balance of handling that information, especially if we have to share that to an authority when reporting these kind of instances. But as always communicating about these messy these dirty or these hoarding conditions that requires tact and sensitivity, we have to address this in such a way that it doesn't shame or alienate that client, but instead focuses on on the solution that can improve the conditions of the pets. I know we keep coming back to that. But when we talk about why we're there in that client's home, we're advocates for the pets, we're advocates for their health, their safety, and we can speak to and from that, yes, we have our personal health and safety concerns as well. But when we present this to the client is for the pet sake and for their well being and their longevity. In the
Meghan 16:17
best case scenario, a client would be very receptive and welcoming to your feedback, very understanding and accepting of you not taking them on as a client. Again, in probably the majority of cases, the client isn't going to be very happy, they are now needing to find another pet sitter and have to take the time and the space to find somebody new, or maybe take your recommendation but have to go check out that place, or that person, and it is going to be a big inconvenience on them, they you may also get a bad review based off of this or honestly no fault of your own. But you do kind of have to think ahead about how this person may respond to you. But do know that however the client responds, you are not ultimately responsible for their feelings, you are not responsible for the state of their house, you are only responsible for what you can control, which is what you tell them, you just have to be the most professional that you can maintaining those professional boundaries is crucial. Clearly define what is within your scope to address. And when it's appropriate to involve others, you don't have to be the solution. But you can suggest areas for support, it is very likely going to be hard to step away from that client, particularly if you've built this relationship over many months or years. But sometimes it is the best thing that you can do, it can feel very freeing to get out from under a client that is like this. But unfortunately, these situations will happen if you are in the business for many years.
Collin 17:43
And it doesn't again have to be these hoarding situations, if you have to use the sink a lot. And this client always has dishes piled up in the sink. And you can't actually do this. And you've asked them nicely to make that happen. And they are just refusing to or they're not listening to those suggestions. It's okay to say because this is required for me to do my job duties, I am not able to do that, I am unable to continue to service you as one of my clients.
Meghan 18:11
That can even be if you are house sitting for a client and they leave a month or more at a time pretty consistently or several weeks at a time consistently. And they don't have a vacuum for you to use. They may be okay with that, because they don't really care, they don't see a need for a vacuum. But you have asked them repeatedly as part of the care of the pet to clear the litter, please provide me at least a broom to sweep or a vacuum or something. And if they are not receptive to what you're saying and are blatantly ignoring you, then it's time to step away.
Collin 18:41
That you may think of some clients right now of Oh, when I go to see that cat or go see that dog, I do have to spend 1015 minutes cleaning just to get it to the point where I can take care of this dog or get their bowls scrub or get these things done. And the client doesn't really seem that concerned about it or, or maybe being in the home makes me feel icky and makes me feel dirty because of the way the floor is because of how sticky things are all those things. That's when we can decide, is this worth taking care of this pet? Or is it not? Because unfortunately, these situations will happen, we hopefully won't encounter the true actually hoarding situations at all. But there will be clients who have a level of cleanliness in their home that is different than yours. And it will impact your ability to care for those pets in a quality manner even so much as going as far as impacting their health, potentially or yours. And it's a reminder of again, why screening your clients is so critical. But we have to stay on top of the conditions from visit to visit and speak up early and get ahead of things. Don't wait for them to accumulate have little conversations so that by the time you have to have a big one or hopefully that gets a View avoiding a big conversation, but it will allow you to build some trust with that person. And always asking those questions if they haven't booked you in a year or so has anything changed? Have you moved anything? Hey, could you send me a photo of where their litter box is? Can you send me a photo of where the feeding station is, so that you have some idea of the condition of that home? Or maybe you're going to require another meet and greet to go over there to verify everything so that you can get some eyes and ears on the ground to assess to see if you are still willing to take that client on. With
Meghan 20:32
all things in your business. You can say no, it is a complete sentence. It is the shortest sentence, but you can say it, people may not take it very well. But again, you are not responsible for how they feel and how they take things. You can only control you. And if you are uncomfortable with a situation, get out. It's not worth it. You are a business and you have boundaries. We'd be very interested to know how you have handled this in your business. If you have advice for other pet sitters. You can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. or look us up on Instagram and Facebook at Pet Sitter confessional. We know that this is a very touchy subject. Everybody has different opinions. Everybody has different levels of cleanliness. So thank you for joining us today. And we'd really like to know how you handle this in your own business. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon people for supporting today's show and thank you for taking your time. We will talk with you next time. Bye
