My Client’s Pet Hates Me! What do I do?

It was my very first meet and greet. I had launched the business nearly three months earlier. I had excitedly hung out my social media shingle, switched the website on and prepared to greet clients. I had waiting and waited and waited for a client. Now finally, one had materialized! I was beyond excited and more than a little nervous.

I carefully prepared my meet and greet paperwork. I wanted to look professional, buttoned up, I wanted to look like I’d done a thousand other meet and greets before. The visit started out great, I knocked on the door, exchanged introductions and made pleasant small talk for a few minutes in the entryway. My eyes were glancing around the room looking for the pets. She had two kitties. I had this, I’m great with cats, I have three feline fur babies at home and I grew up with cats, at the risk of being immodest, I’m sort of a cat whisperer. I had this.

We moved into the living room and sat down. She called the kitties out to introduce me to them. They reluctantly came out from behind the couch and went directly to her, clearly wanting nothing to do with me. It got worse from there. As soon as she tried to move the cats in my direction to allow us to get to know each other, they reacted with hissing and growling…at ME. My heart sank, my first thought was, they hate me, how is this client going to trust me to give her cats the loving care they deserve it they can’t stand me?!? I did my best to appear unfazed and made an excuse about the kitties smelling some other animals on me. Inside though I was sure she would politely say, thanks but no thanks!

I got through the meet and greet and surprisingly she booked! I couldn’t understand why, but I was thrilled to finally have a client so I chalked it up to an unexpected but happy outcome and moved on. There would be many more meet and greets after that and sometimes the pets just wouldn’t react well. Over time I realized there’s a critical thing to remember about being a pet sitter that comes into people’s houses to watch their pets. There’s a reason that they’ve hired an in house pet sitter, I mean beyond the usual desire to have their pets stay in their own home. That reason is often that their pets DON’T play well with others. I don’t mean the pets are aggressive or unfriendly, I mean that, before they came to live in their current loving environment, they came from a bad place where they were mistreated or they developed some fear that doesn’t allow them to interact immediately in a good way. Or possibly they just haven’t had the proper socialization so critical during their early years. The consequence of this is that they don’t do well in public kennels where they are forced to interact with other humans and animals. In many cases their owners have experienced this first hand and, not wanting to inflict that kind of stress on their beloved pet again, hire an in-home pet sitter.

And then you come into the picture walking into a situation where the pet doesn’t know you and clearly intruding in their territory and worse, on their human. They do the only thing they know, they lash out at you. Luckily, this too shall pass, most of the time. As a professional pet sitter, animal lover and caregiver you win them over and are soon the best of friends.

So take heart and be patient, the pets and the pet parent will come around. The best thing, the only thing, you can do is treat both with sincerity, love and tenderness and when they’re ready, they’ll both come to you.

That first client is still a client, a great client that books regularly. And her cats still hate me. Go figure!