A house sitter does not just feed your dog. For the length of the stay, their working day, their social life and their animals become your dog's entire routine, and your dog cannot file a report afterwards. Owners tend to ask about dog experience, which matters, and forget to ask about the sitter's ordinary Tuesday, which matters more, because an ordinary Tuesday is what he will live through, repeated for a week, in a house that smells faintly wrong without you in it.
Their Day Job Sets Your Dog's Day
Ask how their day actually runs, hour by hour. What time do they leave, where do they work, and how long is the dog alone in one stretch and across the whole day? Working from your home some days and an office on others produces a very different dog week from five long absences, and a dog used to company at midday feels the difference in his behaviour by day three. Ask about evenings too: a sitter who goes straight out after work leaves a dog whose only outing was at dawn.
Ask what happens when work runs late, because it will at least once: a delayed train, a meeting that eats the evening walk. Listen for a plan rather than an apology in advance: a neighbour they can call, a shifted walk they can describe, a way the dog still gets out and fed at a sane hour. Ask whether their employer knows they sit, and whether a work emergency could summon them away overnight, because that answer decides whether you also need a backup human.
Visitors Are a Policy, Not a Surprise
Ask plainly about visitors, and agree the rules rather than assuming them. Can friends come for dinner? Can a partner stay overnight? Will children visit, and how does the sitter manage introductions between visiting children and a dog who did not choose them? None of this is nosiness; your dog will meet whoever walks in, your neighbours will see them, and your house rules on shoes, smoking and doors apply to guests you will never meet.
Listen for how the sitter talks about the dog inside those plans. A sitter who says visitors would meet the dog calmly, on lead at first if he is excitable, and that the dog can retreat to his own space, is describing management. A sitter who treats the house as a venue and the dog as a greeter has told you the visit pattern your dog will endure. Agree numbers and nights in advance, because one quiet friend for supper and a birthday gathering are both, technically, visitors.
Other Pets They Bring or Visit
Ask about any other pets they would bring or visit during the stay. A sitter's own dog coming along changes the household completely: two dogs need an introduction before the stay, a plan for feeding apart, and an agreement about who sleeps where and what happens if they fall out at midnight. Ask to arrange that introduction on neutral ground while you are still home, because discovering incompatibility after your flight leaves nobody a good option.
Ask also about pets they visit elsewhere: another sitting commitment across town, their own cat at home they pop back to feed. Each visit is an absence from your dog and a carrier of strange smells that some dogs find deeply interesting and others find alarming. Agree how feeding, walking and sleeping arrangements work around those trips, and what happens to the visiting-pet plan if your dog proves unsettled by it. Once the stay begins, the Care Pass you set up through KinsLe keeps that one sitter's access scoped to your dog's care and ends when they hand the keys back.