[.ca] The Professional Pet Sitter: Your Guide to Starting and ... (ISBN 0963544217)

Very Helpful:
I am trying right now to start a pet-sitting business. I purchased this book a few weeks ago, and I found it very helpful. It has many details in it on how to stay organized. It talks about licenses, accounting, employees. It is written by a husband/wife team who own their own petsitting business, and basically outlines in detail their procedures they use for all the aspects of pet-sitting. This book is extremely helpful for those who want to start a pet-sitting business, but are not sure how to get started.

Good business advice for Pet Sitting, but not great:
"The Professional Pet Sitter" is sort of a hybrid. It's about starting a business and it's about taking care of animals. This book shouldn't be the only one you read about either of these topics, but it does a good job of addressing the issues of starting a business that are specific to sitting for pets. There's an emphasis on the importance of process and paperwork. There are sample forms - Client cards, service agreements, ledgers, etc. And there's a good discussion of the day-to-day organization that the author's have found effective in running their own business. In the preface, the authors say explicitely "We won't tell you how to give pills, walk dogs or clean bird cages." Don't buy the book looking for that.

Business 101:
Although this book touches upon many of the aspects needed to start a pet sitting business, that's all it does- touches. Most of the information is common sense (for example, to set up your office the authors suggest getting a desk, a chair and good lighting). Having had a previous business of my own in a completely different field, this book offered nothing new. Also, much of the information is outdated- the forms, book keeping and filing systems they suggest using are all paper based and type written. Save yourself a lot of unnecessary paperwork, double-entries and headaches and buy a computer with a word processor and a book keeping program. If your budget is really tight, you can get a used computer for practically nothing and just buy the software. Even decent printers can be found for under \omoney amount\c! This book reads like a general guide on starting any home based business, using pet sitting as an example, for those who have never even stepped into a working office before. I do not feel the price is worth the information this book has to offer.

A complete & quick read on operating a pet sitting business!:
I was anxious to begin my pet sitting business but apprehensive without a proper guide to the specifics of this field. After reading reviews on this and other similar books, I purchased "The Professional Pet Sitter", and the price seemed reasonable. The book is set up in an easy to read and understand manner with several illustrations. I gained valuable business information geared specifically for the pet sitter. The Mangold's take you through every step of conducting the daily business from bookkeeping, to the security of your clients information, to the love and care of pets necessary to succeed in this business. The last few pages are full size, duplicatable forms which further the success of a pet sitting business. After reading this book (in just a few hours I might add) I find the information to be priceless and I am geared up to begin my new venture.

30 dollars for this?:
The book was fairly helpful and straightforward, perhaps a bit cute at time, but pretty organized and to the point. I think it spent too much time talking about running a small business, and not enough specifically on this business. I also thought it was extremely overpriced; there have got to be better guides, for the money. No wonder pet sitting is so lucrative; think i'll write the next book