I applied for a sit two weeks ago and have heard nothing. Should I contact them again? How long is a reasonable time to wait for the pet owner to respond?
Somewhere there is a guideline that says they should be responding within 72 hours. I’ve seen lots of sits where homeowners just sit on applications. I think they don’t understand how this works – that petsitters are probably applying to other sits and making plans. And they could lose out on great sitters.
Sometimes pet parents might want to wait until they get a few applicants. The “system” will encourage them to make a choice once they get 5 applicants, but if they don’t sign on often, they won’t get the message.
While this is annoying to sitters, I don’t think HOs realize this and most don’t read the forums. Two weeks is a long time. I’m imagining the sit is still a few months from now?
You have options: You can keep looking for sits, and not do anything. You can search for sits that overlap each other. Once you are confirmed for a sit, you can decline the other sits. You can write to the HO to check on the status. This might not do much good in terms of pushing them to make a decision. If you are actually pursuing other sits, but would rather have the sit you are waiting to hear back from, you could let the owner know. If you have an excuse to get back them – a question, something that you wanted to add from your application, you could do that.
It’s also always a good idea to offer a second way of contacting you – WhatsApp for instance, on your initial application. So you could write a friendly message with the secondary contact “in case they have questions.”
If this is for a sit that is last minute – one of the many Christmas sits sitll available for instance, you could definitely remind the pet owner that you are still interested but would need to know soon.
You could also withdraw your application at any time.
Never wait for a pet owner! They might never respond.
Never wait with sending out other applications. When you see a sit that you would like to do, just apply.
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Completely up to you. We withdraw our application after 72 hours if we have had no response. I feel tardiness (red flag) sets the tone for the sit.