Pet Sitting Insurance and Bonding: Quotes From Only $5

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It’s impossible to leave pets on their own and without pet sitters, owners will find it hard to be away from their pets to work, take a trip, or visit friends and family.

From extended stays to brief daily checks, pet owners can rely on pet sitters to take care of their pets. The average income of those providing pet sitting services is $12.68 per hour and $26,000 annually for each client. And to ensure they continue to make clients happy, many pet sitting businesses and independent pet sitters decide to get pet sitting business insurance

Insurance can help you if trouble happens. For example, you can still be held liable even if a pet you’re currently watching over gets injured by the dog groomer. The same is also true if the pet suddenly gets sick.

Today, we’ll teach you how helpful small business insurance is for pet sitters and pet sitting companies by explaining the basics of pet sitting insurance and bonding, outlining the common policies for pet sitters and pet sitting companies, and providing a comparison of pet sitting insurance rates. We’ll also review the most popular carriers.

Pet Sitting Insurance and Bonding: The Basics

Pet sitting business insurance is a policy that’s designed to cover specific risks associated with pet sitting, for example:

• Property damage lawsuits

• Personal injury lawsuits

• Damage or loss of commercial property

• Employee injuries

Pet sitting insurance ensures that you can take care of costly claims against your business. It will also help you recover financial losses.

Getting this insurance is very essential and you'll never know what could go wrong. For example, a simple accident could easily turn into a problematic legal fiasco. Without insurance, paying for attorney fees, other legal costs, and compensation might cost $500,000 - $1 million. 

Additionally, having pet sitting insurance helps as it will make finding clients easier. For example, dog boarding facilities might require you to get a $1 million general liability policy. The reason why clients only work with pet sitters having insurance is that they also want to be covered in case something goes wrong.

But still, know that pet sitting business insurance can’t provide help all of the time. And so, it’s also important to get a bond. 

How Bonding Helps Your Pet Sitting Business

In addition to pet sitters’ insurance, you must also purchase a bond. There are different types of bonds but the most common types, when it comes to pet sitting, are 

• Dishonesty bond 

• Surety bond

You use a dishonesty bond to pay the client in case your employee committed theft,  which is never covered in liability insurance. On the other hand, a surety bond ensures your pet sitting company can reimburse the losses of the client if services aren’t completed or not provided well. 

Having a bond makes you more trustworthy. In fact, many pet owners won’t even hire an un-bonded pet sitting business in the first place as they see a lack of bonding as unprofessional and non-commitment to quality service.

Hopefully, by now, you have a better understanding of how pet sitting insurance works and why it’s important to get a bond for pet sitting business. Now, it’s time to show you the different policies business insurance companies offer in their pet minding insurance. 

I Provide Pet Sitting and Home Boarding Services. Is Pet Sitting Insurance Enough?

Pet sitting insurance might exclude home boarding activities. This is why, even though it seems redundant, you’ll need to invest in a pet boarding insurance package. 

Liability Insurance for Pet Sitters 

Pet sitting business insurance offers liability insurance for pet sitters as basic protection from exposures. In a nutshell, the purpose of liability insurance is to pay for legal fees and compensation to the aggrieved party. There are four types of liability insurance carriers offer in their pet sitter insurance :

• General liability insurance

• Public liability insurance

• Professional liability insurance (e&o insurance)

General Liability Insurance for Pet Sitters

is the most common type of coverage for pet sitters. This policy covers personal injury and property damage lawsuits. Insurance companies underwrite general liability insurance to cover the following perils:

• Vandalism of the client’s property

• Injuries or death of the client’s pet under your watch

• Injuries to the client

Having general liability insurance for dog walkers and pet sitters will be extremely helpful. It’s because incidents that it covers can be very costly. Here’s an example:

• Doggie Love, a pet-sitting agency, received a $1 million lawsuit after one of its employees allegedly caused the death of a client’s french bulldog

Independent pet sitters and pet sitting companies decide to get general liability insurance before anything else. You should too. It’s because this policy is comprehensive and comes with a lot of optional coverages such as:

• Products and completed operations

• Advertising injury coverage

• Rented premises liability coverage

Products and completed operations will cover third-party personal injuries or property damage caused by a completed product or service. For example, if the client’s pet suddenly becomes sick after you looked after it, products and completed operations will protect you if the client files a claim later on. 

Your pet sitting business might be accused of inflicting advertising or reputational harm. In this situation, advertising injury coverage can help. Advertising injury coverage will cover costs if your business is sued for slander, libel, false advertising, or copyright infringement. 

Public Liability Insurance for Pet Sitters

Just like general liability insurance, public liability insurance will take care of personal injuries or property damage your pet sitting business might inflict on clients, vendors, visitors, and other third parties. 

Public liability insurance is very limited in terms of the perils it covers. Unlike general liability, it doesn’t come with optional coverages you can avail for more protection. But it’s cheaper. That’s why this is the ideal coverage if you’re just starting. 

Errors and Omissions Insurance for Pet Sitters

Errors and omissions insurance is what provides coverage if a client suffers from economic loss because of your negligence or mistake.  Know that clients can hold you legally responsible. In the pet sitting business, there’s negligence or mistake when:

• There’s a failure to provide care to the pet that the usual pet sitter would have provided

• There’s inaction when the pet became ill while under your watch

• You intentionally hurt the client’s pet out of frustration or any other personal reason

• There’s a failure to exercise due caution while handling a pet to prevent people from getting injured

So how does errors and omissions insurance work in practice? Errors and omissions insurance will cover attorney fees, other legal costs, and compensatory payments on your behalf. Note that perils covered aren’t negligence and mistake only. Errors and omissions will also help if the client files a claim because your business committed:

• Misrepresentation

• Violation of good faith and fair dealing

• Sharing of the client’s confidential information with another party

Having errors and omissions insurance for pet sitting service is a good decision because claims due to negligence or any other related acts don't only happen in theory.  Here are some real-life examples:

• A person from Los Angeles filed a negligence lawsuit against Rover, a pet walking and pet sitting company, after their dog was killed

• Owners Amy and Sean Houston, filed a negligence lawsuit against Rover after their french bulldog drowned while under the company’s pet sitter’s care. The couple demanded Rover to pay for cremation and reimburse the cost of the french bulldog, which amounts to $2,000. 

How Much Coverage Can You Get from Errors and Omissions Insurance?

Similar to the errors and omissions insurance of pet training insurance packages, the errors and omissions insurance of pet sitting insurance packages has a $1 million-$2 million per occurrence and aggregate limit. 

Lost Key Liability Insurance

Some clients will hire your pet sitting business to look after their pet for days and will leave the key to their residence to your employees. Your employee might lose the key and the client will surely file a claim. Insurance companies offer lost key liability insurance that covers this peril. 

You’ll have to pay the clients who had their keys lost. In connection, the function of lost key liability insurance is to provide money you can use to satisfy such responsibility. In addition, lost key liability insurance will also cover payments to locksmiths if ever clients want you to unlock their doors yourself. 

Other Business Insurance for Pet Sitting Businesses 

Commercial Auto Insurance

If you’re using a vehicle to take clients’ pets to different places, then it’s a good idea to get commercial auto insurance.  There are many things that commercial auto insurance can do for your business. The following are the protection it provides:

• Auto liability coverage - Covers medical payments to injured third parties and damaged property as caused by a vehicular accident in which your pet sitting business’s vehicle is at fault

• Physical damage coverage - This has two forms: collision and comprehensive. Collision physical damage coverage will take care of repair or replacement costs if your business’s vehicle incurred damage after crashing into an object or another vehicle. Comprehensive physical damage coverage will cover repair or replacement costs if fire, hail, storm, vandalism, theft, and other covered perils damaged the vehicle

• Medical payments/personal injury protection - This will cover the medical expenses of the injured driver and passengers. Coverage applies even if the accident is caused by your vehicle. 

Commercial Property Insurance

The commercial building your pet sitting business is leasing or owning needs to be insured too. To do so, you’ll have to invest in commercial property insurance. Commercial property insurance has two primary functions:

• Reimburse losses if your commercial building is destroyed by fire, extreme weather, and other related perils

• Reimburse losses if your commercial building is damaged by fire, extreme weather, theft, vandalism, and other covered perils

Insurance companies include stocks and contents coverage in the commercial property insurance for pet sitting businesses. Stocks and contents coverage will reimburse your losses if CCTV cameras, office furniture, computers, documents, and other valuables become damaged or lost due to fire, theft, vandalism, and other covered perils. 

Workers Compensation Insurance

Your employees might get injured while looking after a client’s pet. And so, it’s smart if you also get workers' compensation insurance. Workers' compensation insurance will cover expenses for treatment, hospitalization, rehabilitation, and lost income compensation. Lost income compensation will be equal to two-thirds or 67% of the average weekly wage. Workers' compensation insurance will also provide death benefits to dependents if the employee dies because of his/her work-related injury or disease. 

Cat Sitting Insurance

Tailored cat sitting insurance offers liability policies such as general liability insurance and E&O insurance. If you’re a pet sitting business specializing in cats, then this insurance coverage is a better option. An insurance package related to this is cattery insurance.

Dog Walking Insurance

If you’re a dog walker, then you won’t qualify for pet sitting insurance. Dog walking and pet sitting are not the same.  The table below summarizes the differences between a dog walker and a pet sitter:

Dog walking insurance is the best coverage if walking dogs is your specialty. Just like pet sitter insurance, insurance for dog walking has liability policies. You can make this more comprehensive through endorsements.

Related read: How Much Do Dog Walkers Earn and How to Boost Income?

Liability Insurance for Dog Walkers

Carriers offer liability insurance for dog walkers, which offer protection because the dog being walked bit someone, injured another person’s dog, or got injured while walking. Specific liability policies dog walkers choose to get are general liability insurance, errors and omissions insurance, and public liability insurance.