As the holiday season begins, pet owners are faced with the challenge of finding someone to care for their cat or dog while the owner goes sightseeing or relaxes on the beach. The simplest and most cost-effective option is to hand over the keys to the apartment to accommodating and trustworthy neighbors and ask them to feed the animal, walk it, or change the litter tray. For those who were unable to reach an agreement, there are special services for keeping animals. These same services are also provided by private individuals. The Village looks at how much it costs to look after a cat and dog for a standard two-week holiday.
Cats
Hotel accommodation or private cat foster care
from 250 rubles per day
Two-week holiday for a cat in a spacious room with video surveillance
12,460 rubles
Cat on call
“Everything here is like in human hotels, there are even high and low seasons,” says Andrei Pushkin, owner of the Sir Cat hotels. This is a Moscow chain of four hotels, as the name implies, designed exclusively for cats; dogs are not accepted here. Network points are located in different areas of the city on the territory of business centers. The hotel offers four types of rooms: from budget to luxury, just like in hotels for people.
When choosing a room, you should focus not only on the price, but also on the size and activity of the cat. The basic room has an area of 2.4 square meters and does not have video surveillance capabilities. It costs 489 rubles per day, for two weeks you will have to pay 6,846 rubles. A room of similar size, but equipped with a camera, will cost 9,086 rubles for two weeks; a room of 3.4 square meters with the ability to monitor the cat around the clock via a smartphone will cost 12,460 rubles.
Two hotels in the chain have rooms with an area of 4.3 square meters. They usually house several animals, such as a cat and kittens. Such a room will cost 1,090 rubles per day. Owners can communicate via messenger with the cat nurse caring for the animal. If necessary, the hotel offers a driver who will pick up the animal from the house and bring it back. The cost of a transfer within the Moscow Ring Road is 700–950 rubles one way.
Smart drinker and talking feeder
Other Moscow hotels for cats offer similar services. Thus, in “Cat Behemoth” a glass room with video surveillance and specialized care costs 1,490 rubles per day under the All Inclusive program. The hotel promises to listen to the individual wishes of the owners, and the rooms may have interactive toys, a smart drinking bowl with running water and a feeder with a recording of the owner's voice.
The most spacious rooms, comparable in size to rooms in old-style houses, are offered at Kotel. A room for a cat of seven square meters costs 1,290 rubles per day, but one owner can accommodate up to three animals.
The cheapest place in Moscow to leave an animal is in the Zoodom hotel chain. For a cat under the age of one year and weighing up to five kilograms per day, you need to pay only 250 rubles here, but the price increases with the age and weight of the animal.
Take-away tray
Private individuals offering foster care services ask for about the same amount - 250–300 rubles per day of stay, provided that the owner brings everything necessary: tray, food, bowls, toys.
At the Lapki Rooms hotel, the Comfort package with 24-hour video surveillance, wood filler and Darling food will cost 339 rubles per day or 4,747 rubles for two weeks, including a discount for staying more than a week. The Mosvetstation State Budgetary Institution also offers pet hotel services. You can place an animal there (not only a cat, but also, for example, a dog, ferret or guinea pig) up to five kilograms for 401 rubles per day. The price for accommodation for those who weigh more rises to 448 rubles.
Safety and care for your dog while on vacation or away
Is it possible to spay a dog while in heat?
When traveling on vacation or a business trip, every owner wants to be sure of the safety of their dog in foster care. According to the contract, pet hotel employees or dog sitters are obliged to ensure the comfort and safety of the pet, and not just sit with it. But the owner must provide complete information about the health status of his pet, as well as notify about the presence of vaccinations and allergies to drugs or food.
What age dogs can be fostered?
You can give your dog for foster care at any age. But still, it is not recommended to give away puppies before six months, since at this time the psyche is formed, and besides, the dog at this age learns to build its relationship with the owner. However, if there is no other choice, then you can leave the dog for a while.
When you need to foster a recently acquired adult dog, it is better to do this after 2 weeks of living together. If you leave the dog alone in this case, the separation may undermine the progress of the relationship and trust in the owner.
With good care, the dog can comfortably survive the absence of its owner
Dogs
Dog accommodation at the hotel depending on size and breed
from 300 rubles
Private foster care
from 300 rubles per day
Accommodation for two weeks for a Labrador or Husky in a hotel with homemade food
14,700 rubles
Get out of Moscow
The fact that cats and dogs are at different levels of the social hierarchy in relation to humans has more than once become the reason for memes. But the relatively small number of premium hotels for dogs is not explained by this, but by the impossibility of finding a room in Moscow where several large animals could be accommodated, provided with the opportunity to walk and, moreover, not disturb the neighbors.
As a rule, hotels for dogs are located in the Moscow region or on the outskirts of Moscow and offer an ascetic room for the animal and an individual space for walking it. So, in the Druzhok boarding house for dogs near Moscow, for a seven-square-meter room with a ten-meter fenced section of the street you will have to pay 450 rubles per day, and for a four-meter room with a two-by-four-meter walk - only 300 rubles.
The lowest prices are offered by the Walk Service network with points in Dzerzhinsky and the village of Severny. A two-week stay for an average dog weighing from ten to 30 kilograms will cost only 5,462 rubles. But you can’t expect any luxuries like toys, automatic waterers or ear scratching.
Walks in the park
For those who would like to leave their dog in more comfortable conditions, the Lucky Dog Hotel offers warm, equipped enclosures, walking in the park with other hotel guests and 24-hour supervision. For a small dog they ask for 1,200 rubles per day, for a medium one, up to 25 kilograms - 1,400, the owners of aggressive animals will have to pay the most - 2 thousand rubles.
At the Zoohotel, a room for an average dog - Labrador, Chow Chow, Husky or Dalmatian - will cost 14,700 rubles for two weeks. The room rate includes homemade food - cereals, beef and chicken fillet are cooked for the animals.
Dog as a task
Private individuals also offer to take care of the dog. Many performers on advertising sites are ready to take on a variety of tasks - from courier services to apartment cleaning; they do not refuse to foster an animal. Typically, performers agree to house a well-mannered, medium-sized dog for 300 rubles a day, promise to walk it at least twice a day and send photo and video reports to the owner.
As a rule, the price for foster care increases to 500 rubles per day if the performer has a veterinary education and a high rating. Sometimes it turns out that the person offering foster care services already has his own dog.
Report with a walk map
Home foster care services are also offered by the Walking Dog service. You can choose from two options: place the dog with a dog sitter or invite a person to live with you along with one or more animals. The name of the service itself suggests working only with dogs, but they are also ready to provide services to owners of cats, rabbits and even mini-pigs.
Unlike services that only act as aggregators, here they conduct a selection of dog sitters, which out of 100 people, about five pass. This is followed by online training, testing and practical training with a mentor. “For us, sitters are not strangers, we closely interact with all of them, we know them, we check all documents. We select a performer for each dog, conduct a survey to understand who interacts better with large dogs and who with small ones, who takes animals in and who lives with the client,” explains Valeria, head of the support department of the Walking Dog service. Ivanchikova.
The price depends on the temperament and the required number of walks, and not on where the animal will live. Small dogs that may not go for walks at all, such as lap dogs, chihuahuas, and toy terriers, will cost 690 rubles per day. If a dog needs two walks of 45 minutes each, then its daily maintenance will cost 990 rubles. The most expensive price - 1,190 rubles - will be paid for an active dog that needs to be taken outside three to four times a day, such as a beagle or a Jack Russell terrier.
At the end of the walk, the owner is sent a report with photographs, a route map constructed using GPS, and a detailed story about what the dog did and how it behaved. The service of preparing homemade food from ingredients prepared by the owner and according to his recipe is a bonus; you don’t have to pay extra for it.
Hotels for animals
These types of hotels are small business enterprises that have registration. But to start such a business, you do not need a license. The owner of such an establishment can be an ordinary person; he may not have any special education or experience at all, and may not even like animals. That is why you should first find out everything about the hotel and visit it personally, and only then arrange your pet in a hotel for animal care during your vacation.
Let's imagine with you the ideal hotel for our little brothers, what it should be. You are entering a building located far from houses where a large number of people live; it must be fenced off and there is security. The time of visiting the hotel is agreed upon in advance; it should not resemble a walk-through yard. Rooms for cats should be located separately from dog rooms, ideally if there is a separate entrance at all. Enclosures should be spacious, no more than two or three four-legged animals in one room. The exit from the building should lead to a fenced area for walking.
There should be no specific odors in the room, everything is clean, the air is warm and not humid, and there is tile or linoleum on the floor. When communicating with staff, you have the right to ask a lot of annoying questions, and you should calmly answer them. The hotel must provide your pet with the exact brand of food you specified, or a natural diet according to the menu you wrote. You can also order certain wellness treatments, ear cleaning, nail trimming and combing of your long-haired beauty. All this, of course, is paid separately.
How it all happens
Well, you have decided that you will leave your pet in this hotel. Now on the day that was agreed upon in advance, you bring your cat to the hotel. You should have a veterinary passport with you with all your vaccinations, and you should also have your pet’s personal bedding and favorite toys with you so that he doesn’t get homesick.
The hotel's staff veterinarian must familiarize himself with the animal's passport and conduct an examination, and then make a note in the animal's acceptance certificate.
Then you enter into an agreement - a document that has a legal basis. It should describe the duties of the parties and their responsibilities. The document contains a telephone number so that you can call at any time and ask how your four-legged friend is feeling.
Or maybe take the animal on vacation with you?
Since we're talking about hotels, we can't help but say that there are more and more hotels all over the world that are willing to welcome you and your pet. Yes, of course, it will be a little more expensive than going on vacation just as a couple, but it’s not very critical (about 4,000 rubles extra for a plane and about 500 rubles a day for a hotel). These prices are quite comparable to pet-friendly hotels in your city. Therefore, be sure to try to choose your own tour package with the possibility of accommodating an animal! Just enter the city of departure and the country where you are flying to vacation in the search banner below, and then select the “Pet friendly” option in the filter.
