How to Start a Pet Sitting Business in 2026

Pet sitting and dog walking have one of the lowest startup costs of any service business: no storefront, no kennel and no equipment beyond leashes, a phone and a reliable car. That low barrier is also why the field is crowded, and why anyone learning how to start a pet sitting business should study the sitters who last: they run it like a real business from the first client. They carry the right insurance before the first key changes hands, they have a written agreement and a vet release on file, they price for drive time instead of just walk time, and they have a system for keys that would survive a lost key ring.

This guide walks through eight steps, dog walking included: choosing your services, registering the business and checking local rules, insurance and bonding, pricing, meet-and-greets and paperwork, a key and home-access policy, daily operations, and hiring as you grow. Then come the mistakes that sink new sitters and the software step. Business registration, local permits and employment rules vary by state and city, so treat the regulatory points here as questions to confirm with your local authorities and a qualified advisor, not as final answers. If you plan to board dogs overnight in your own home, that is a different business with its own licensing, covered in our dog boarding start guide.

Most pet sitting businesses sell four core services. Drop-in visits run 20 to 60 minutes at the client's home to feed, water, medicate, scoop the litter box and give a dog a potty break. Dog walks are usually 20, 30 or 60 minutes, solo or in small groups, and they are the recurring revenue engine: a weekday lunchtime walk for a client who works in an office is five visits a week, every week. House sitting and overnights put the sitter in the client's home for the night, usually with evening and morning care built in. Add-ons round it out: extra pets, medication, plant watering and mail, pet taxi runs to the vet or groomer, and yard poop-scoop visits.

Decide early whether you want to be a walking business, a sitting business or both, because they create very different weeks. Walking clients are steady and predictable but tie you to the middle of every weekday. Sitting clients come in waves around holidays and summer travel, pay more per booking and leave quiet weeks in between. Many businesses start with one and add the other to smooth the calendar. Pick a service area as well. A tight radius of a few neighborhoods keeps drive time down, which matters more to your margin than almost anything else in this business.

Start with the legal structure. Many sitters begin as a sole proprietor and form an LLC once they have steady clients, and some form the LLC on day one for the liability separation. Either way, file with your secretary of state if you form an entity, get an EIN from the IRS (free at irs.gov, and needed to open a business bank account and to hire), and keep client payments in a separate business account so they never mix with personal spending. If you operate under a name other than your own, register the trade name as your state or county requires.

Then ask your city or county what applies to a mobile pet care business. Many require a general business license even for home-based service businesses. Some cities and park agencies set rules for professional dog walkers, such as permits to walk in certain parks or a cap on how many dogs one person may handle at once, and apartment buildings and homeowners associations may have their own rules on who enters with a key. Ask about home-occupation rules if you will run the office from your house, and remember that boarding pets in your own home is usually regulated separately from visiting pets in theirs. Put every renewal date on the calendar the day you receive the license.

Pet sitters are responsible for other people's animals and other people's homes, so insurance comes before marketing. The core policy is general liability that includes care, custody or control coverage, often shortened to CCC. Pet Sitters International, a trade association for sitters and walkers, explains why in its pet sitting insurance guide: standard liability policies typically exclude personal property in your care, and a client's pet counts as property in your care. PSI advises not accepting a first assignment until that coverage is in place.

Bonding is the second layer, and it is not insurance. A bond is a guarantee to clients that they will be compensated if an employee steals from them, up to the bond limit, and it matters once anyone other than you carries keys. Trade associations such as PSI and the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters (NAPPS) give members access to group-rate insurance and bonding through partner insurers. Membership is voluntary and does not come with coverage by itself, so compare their programs with quotes from an independent agent. Ask the agent about commercial auto coverage if you will drive pets, because a personal auto policy may not cover business use, and about workers' compensation, which most states require once you have employees, with rules that vary by state.

Price from the clock, not from the competitor down the road. A 30-minute walk is rarely 30 minutes of your time. Add the drive between visits, parking, getting in the door, the paw wipe and the visit note, and it is often closer to 45. Work out what you need to earn per hour after insurance, fuel, software and taxes, then price each service so that a realistic day of back-to-back visits hits that number. As an illustration, if a walk plus travel takes about 45 minutes and you want roughly $40 an hour before expenses, the walk needs to be priced around $30. Run the same math with your own numbers.

Then check your local market. Rates vary widely by city, so look at what established sitters in your area publish and position yourself deliberately rather than by accident. Build the rest of the menu around the base prices: an extra-pet fee, a medication fee for injections, a surcharge for holidays and the peak weeks around them, a last-minute booking fee, and a key pickup or consultation fee if you charge one. Weekly walking packages reward commitment and smooth your cash flow. Write down a cancellation policy with a clear cutoff, such as 24 hours for walks and a week or more for holiday house sits, and keep a card on file so you can enforce it.

Never take a new client sight unseen. The meet-and-greet, usually 20 to 30 minutes at the client's home, is where you meet the pets, learn the house, test the key or door code, and decide whether this is a client you want. Watch how the dog reacts to you at the door, ask about bite history and reactivity with other dogs, and walk the route to the leash, the food, the medications and the breaker box. Many sitters charge for the meet-and-greet or credit it toward the first booking.

Leave with three documents signed. The service agreement covers services and rates, payment terms, the cancellation policy, what happens if the client is delayed coming home, and your right to decline a pet that is unsafe to handle. The veterinary release authorizes you to seek treatment, names the client's vet and an emergency contact, and sets a spending limit you can act on without reaching the owner. A pet and home information sheet captures feeding amounts, medications, behavior quirks, house rules, alarm and lockbox details, and where the carrier and first-aid kit live. Have a local attorney review your agreement and release templates once, then use them for every client without exception.

Keys are where a pet sitting business earns or loses trust, so write the policy down before you hold your first one. Code every key instead of labeling it: a tag with a number that maps to a client in your records, never a name or address, so a lost ring does not become a map of empty homes. Keep a key log that shows which key is where, who signed it out and when it came back, and ask clients for two copies so a spare stays locked in your office. Store alarm codes, lockbox combinations and garage codes in an encrypted password manager or your pet sitting software, not in text messages or a notes app.

Then decide what happens at the edges. Where do keys live between visits, and who is allowed to take them home? Will you accept lockboxes, and who buys one when a client needs it? What is the fee and procedure if a key is lost, including rekeying the client's locks? What happens to keys when a client stops using you? Put the answers in your service agreement, and when you hire, make the key policy part of training on the first day.

Once you have a dozen regular clients, the schedule becomes the business. Group recurring walks by neighborhood so you are not crossing town at noon, and sell visit windows rather than exact times so a slow elevator does not make you late for the next dog. Build buffer into holiday weeks, when overnights and drop-ins stack up and every client wants the same dates. Keep a running notes file per pet: the cat that hides under the guest bed, the dog that will only drink from a ceramic bowl, the neighbor who holds a spare key.

Owner updates are part of the product. A photo and two sentences at the end of each visit, sent the same way every time, stops most check-in texts before they start. Many pet sitting apps automate this with GPS check-ins and visit reports; if you send updates by hand, use a consistent template so they read as professional rather than chatty. Have a backup plan for the days you are sick: a trusted sitter you can call, a clause in the agreement that allows a substitute, and clients who know the plan in advance. Finally, know your route to the nearest 24-hour veterinary hospital from every neighborhood you serve.

Most pet sitting businesses hit a ceiling at the number of midday walks one person can physically do. Growing past it means hiring, and the first question is whether your sitters will be employees or independent contractors. That is a legal classification, not a preference: the IRS looks at behavioral control, financial control and the relationship between the parties, and your state may apply its own, sometimes stricter, test. Read the IRS guidance on independent contractor or employee and talk to an accountant or employment attorney before you hire, because misclassification can mean back taxes and penalties. If you set schedules, train staff on your methods and send them to your clients, get professional advice on how that affects classification.

Hire for reliability and judgment over experience. Run background checks within your state's rules, call references, and have every new sitter shadow you on real visits before working alone. Pay per visit or hourly according to their classification and your state's wage rules, and track mileage if you reimburse it. Confirm your bond covers staff, add them to your insurance as your policy requires, and set up payroll before the first paycheck. Then decide what you will stop doing yourself: at five or six sitters, the owner's job shifts from walking dogs to scheduling, quality control and sales.

Paper and a group text work for about five clients. Past that, you need software for two different jobs. The field job is the visit itself: GPS check-ins, visit reports with photos, key tracking and a staff app, which is what dedicated pet sitting apps are built for. The business job is everything around the visits: booking, a CRM for every household, autopay invoicing, agreements, marketing and the phone. Our roundup of the best pet sitter software compares the specialists side by side, with published prices as of 2026.

Deelo, the platform we build, covers the business job. Deelo Bookings takes meet-and-greet bookings online, assigns visits round-robin across sitters, keeps a deposit and a card on file, and records prepaid walk packs that staff redeem after each walk, though regular walks are entered one visit at a time because it has no recurring series, which starts to cost you time once your week fills with standing slots; Invoicing handles a card on file and monthly autopay; E-sign sends the service agreement and vet release for signature; Vault keeps door and alarm codes encrypted and shared with the sitters you choose rather than the whole team; and the AI assistant answers calls and texts while you walk (phone and SMS run on the Communications add-on). Deelo does not do GPS walk tracking, photo report cards or a key-custody log, so if those are part of what you sell, pair it with a pet sitting app or start with the specialist. The free plan covers one seat with every app, enough to run a solo business.