Welcome Home Pet and House Sitting

We’ve used Welcome Home for a few years now and are very pleased with the services provided to our furry, four-​legged girls. We use the overnight service as we do not feel comfortable leaving them alone overnight. They are well cared for and loved just as if we were home. Our favorite, Terry, is exceptional but the few others that have stayed with our girls were very good too. The notes and/​or emails on their daily activities puts you at ease knowing that things are great at home. I would highly recommend Welcome Home to anyone looking for this wonderful service at very affordable prices. Thank you Leslie, Terry, and all your staff for the amazing services that you provide!

I must say I am very pleased at the level of service I got from Leslie.
She was on time and took care of my baby like he was hers.
She left a note for me when I got home telling me how he behaved,
I called from my trip several times and she promptly returned my calls.
I recommend Welcome Home Pet Sitting Service to anyone in Lake County.
Definitely will use her again on any trip I take that my baby can’t go with me.
Thanks Leslie for being there for me when I needed someone special to take care of my big baby.

I want to start this off by saying that when we found Welcome Home we thought that we had hit the jackpot — they seemed like very nice people and they seemed to really care about the pets they care for. We had hired Welcome Home due to the fact that our one yellow lab is now 14 years old and needs extra care when we are not home — more than our previous pet sitter could give him — plus overnight stays — something we have not done until now. Welcome Home knew our requirements and seemed to fit the bill.
We met with the Welcome Home owner, Leslie, and the person who would be staying at our house while we were away two separate times before we agreed to sign them up. They met all of our pets, and took copious notes on what was needed and how things run in our household. We had two small trips (less than a week) and then a big trip for 3 weeks coming up at the end of August and Welcome Home agreed to the dates given.
The first trip seemed to go well — we were only gone for a few days and when we got home we were very pleased with what we found. The pets seemed happy, there were nice detailed notes left on what happened while we were away, and things were nice and clean. We were scheduled to leave again a week later and felt confident that things went well since we were not told anything otherwise. In fact, in one of the notes, the pet sitter said «she couldn’t wait to come back!»
The second trip happened, and while we were away, the Chicago area was hit with a once in a lifetime storm and our house lost power for 2.5 of the six days the pet sitter was here. We talked to our pet sitter daily and being it was the middle of summer and the a/​c was out we told her that she was welcome to go home at night and come back in the morning to check on the pets — all this while still paying full price for an overnight stay to our home. (We had no problem with this — it was some extraordinary circumstances that were of no one’s fault.)
When we arrived home, the pet sitter was finishing packing up and we talked with her briefly about how hard the week had been, but she at no time said anything about the pets, just how hot it had been and that having no water was difficult. We agreed and thanked her profusely for her help with our pets during the storm. She left us many pages of nice notes and even offered to help us — for a price — with a BBQ we were having a few weeks later — not going through Welcome Home, of course.
A few days later my husband received an email with the final invoice, for the two trips, which he promptly paid. A few days after that we received another email informing us that we were now declined for the next scheduled trip — the large one at the end of summer — basically leaving us high and dry for a trip to Europe in 5 weeks because… our lab was «too hard to take care of» and that we should «call them back when he is no longer here as they enjoyed the rest of the pets! «(In other words, call back when he’s dead?!)
At no time during the two interviews or the two trips we took or the invoicing process was our elderly lab’s care requirements brought to our attention as a problem. He is 14 years old and needs some help getting up sometimes off the hardwood floor and some help going down the one stair out the back door. These requirements were quite clear seeing that this is one of the main reasons we were switching to a new pet service and I think it is bad business practice to now abandon us with no one to take our pets for a trip that has been in the planning for over a year. I guess lifting him up was too hard — although I am half the size of the petsitter and do it daily with no problem — or was it something else? I guess we’ll never know. (We offered to go over our dog’s care again in case there was something being done wrong and making it harder than it could be, but we were told «Call us when he’s gone.»)
Thanks a bunch, Welcome Home.

I’ve used Welcome Home for several years and have been extremely satisfied. Occasionally my requests have been at the last minute and the owner Leslie has always found a way to meet my needs. The sitters who work for her are pet lovers who seem to genuinely enjoy what they do.
As my work requires me to travel, it’s comforting to know that while away my pets and home are in such capable and caring hands.