Monitoring Your Pets And Petsitters

By Author: Peter Rich
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For many people, their pets are extensions of their family. They are not just furry friends; they are more like children. When you are around, you can lavish them with love and attention but what about when you are away from home, at work or on vacation? What do your pets get into when you are away? And if you are hiring a petsitter to look after your animals while you are on vacation, how do you know that they are getting proper care and attention in your absence? One way to check up is to have a camera monitoring system. It can provide you with peace of mind while you are away from home.

Why Would you Need to Monitor Your Pets While at Work?

How do you find out how your pets are behaving after you drive off to work each day? Do they sit at the gate and howl until they hear you coming back up the driveway? Do they go digging in the garden? Or do they jump the fence and go wandering around the neighborhood? Imagine being a neighbor that works from home or being at home for the day because you are sick. Instead of having some suburban peace and quiet to either work or recuperate, you have to endure a day of ...
... incessant howling or barking. Most often if you take this up with your neighbor they will deny it, claiming their dogs never howl or bark. Perhaps the more accurate response is that they don't behave like that when the pet owners are home but they can become absolute brats when they are left on their own.

Keeping the Peace with Your Neighbors

If you have ever gotten a complaint like that, then the only way you can really establish what is happening while you are away is to monitor your premises using a camera. If you do discover that your pets are disrupting the neighborhood, you can then take action and work towards changing your pet's behavior. You may also owe your neighbors an apology. On the other hand, the camera footage may show that delinquent neighborhood kids are teasing your pets and making them bark. In this case, your pets are acting normally and you can resolve the issue by talking to the parents of the kids who are causing the situation.

Reasons for Monitoring Petsitters

Anyone who has trained their pet knows that it takes a lot of time and effort to get animals to behave properly. At the same time, it only takes one person to undo the good work by introducing some bad habits or ignoring the house rules.

For example, suppose you have two large dogs and they have been trained from a young age that they may come inside the house when you are there but they may never jump up onto the bed or sofas. Your petsitter love dogs so much that he or she doesn't mind your dogs cuddling up to them on the sofa and in fact, may even encourage it. You return from a two-week vacation and suddenly your two dogs are so in the habit of jumping up on the sofa that they don't even remember that you don't allow it. When you try to correct your pets' behavior, they probably won't understand why they suddenly are no longer allowed on the sofa. You will then have a big task on your hands as you try to retrain them in your house rules. If you have a monitoring system, you can pick up on the first day what bad habits your petsitter is introducing. You can contact your petsitter immediately and ask them to rectify the situation so that it doesn't get entrenched as a bad habit that you have undo upon your return

Making Sure Your Pets are Well Cared for When you are Away

You may also have set feeding times for your pets. A monitoring system could give you peace of mind to know the petsitter adheres to this and feeds them the proper amount at the proper time. It's not uncommon for petsitters to get lazy and come in every second day and just leave an extra amount of food instead of dropping by every day and spending some time with the pets. Pets become attached to their owners and when you are away, it's not enough just to make sure they're fed; you also have to be sure that you petsitter is giving them some attention.
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An Alarm.com system is much more than an alarm. In addition to forwarding any home alarm monitoring to the monitoring center for emergency response, Alarm.com lets you remotely monitor non-alarm activity at the property around the clock, even when the system is disarmed. Fully customizable settings ensure you get exactly the information you want, only when you want it.