How to Leave a Key for a Pet Sitter Without Handing It Over
Giving a dog walker or pet sitter your spare key is a lot of trust in a stranger. The sitters think so too, and they have a better place for it to live.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
The spare key is the awkward bit of booking a pet sitter. You've found somebody the dog likes and agreed the visits. Now they need a way into the house while you're away.
Under the mat is out. So the key goes into their hand at the meet and greet, and you spend the week hoping it stays on their ring.
Sitters and dog walkers who do this for a living mostly don't want your key at all. One sitter in r/petsitting carries none: the client provides a lockbox, and the key stays at the house.
If you're about to hand a spare key to a dog walker or pet sitter, that's what they ask for instead: a small combination box that hangs off a doorknob, like the Master Lock key lock box. It's cheap, the key never leaves your property, and the sitter opens it with a code you can change.
Why don't sitters want your key?
Holding your key is a liability on their side, and a lost one is a disaster for them as much as for you. A sitter who once ran hundreds of keys on a colour-coded system now keeps none on them, lockbox or keypad only. It keeps the client in control of their own keys.
Another sitter's boss bans keys leaving the property altogether, for insurance.
The business that used to keep more than 300 client keys in a storage unit put it like this:
And then we came to our senses, stopped paying for a storage unit where our sitters could access the keys and moved our clients to lockboxes. Life is beautiful!
u/ktanky, in r/petsitting
The reason is what happens when a key goes missing. One commenter's dog-walking friend had a car stolen with the client book and the keys in it, and paid for new locks at several houses.
That bill lands on the sitter. Time To Pet, which makes scheduling software for sitters, tells one who loses a key that the professional thing to do is offer to pay for the client's locks to be re-keyed.
A two-partner sitting business in the storage-unit thread never accepts a key. They buy boxes by the ten-pack and lend them to overnight and regular clients, and when a client says "take my key" the answer is no. In another thread they keep a box at each regular's house and call it worth it.
Where to leave the key for a pet sitter
The box hangs over the knob by its shackle. The key goes inside, you scramble the four dials, and it stays there until somebody with the code comes.
An owner in r/RoverPetSitting who bought the Master Lock one says it can only go on or come off the knob while it's open, so nobody can walk off with it. It's a bit clunky to hang, though.
Which brand matters less than where it hangs. One sitter has never seen the same brand twice and likes them all.
A walker whose clients use them all the time says don't mount it anywhere near the door. A box in plain view is an open invitation to anyone who fancies a go at it. Hang it out of sight and away from the front door: behind a wall, say, or on the back-door knob, which is where one client's hangs.
The sitter whose boss bans keys off the property says their company hangs boxes on a gas meter or a railing. But a reply warns that a utility company will cut a box off its meter. Pick the railing.
None of that makes the box safer than your lock. It's a metal box hanging outside, and the walker's point is that it can be broken into. What it does is keep the key at your house, off a stranger's ring and out of a stranger's car.
Put only the key in it. A sitter who likes clients to use them asks for the key and maybe a small ring. Fitting a full keyring with its dangling bits into a small box that's swinging on a knob, while locking it, is a pain.
What to check before you go
The box is only as good as the code and what's inside it, and the sitters have a routine for both:
- Test the code at the meet and greet. One sitter always asks to try it while the owner is there, having been given a wrong code more than once. Another calls testing the box, the keys and the alarm code standard procedure before a sit starts.
- Check the key is actually in there. Time To Pet lists the owner who forgot to leave the key for the pet sitter as a known failure, and suggests two keys in each box. Wag's home-access policy tells owners to double-check on the day that the key is in place.
- Change the code when the sitter changes. The same Wag policy says to change lockbox codes frequently. The code you gave last summer's walker is still the code until you turn the dials.
- Ask for a photo. In r/LivingAlone, a renter who didn't want to hand a key over was told to use a box like realtors use, so the sitter has to put the key back each visit. A sitter replied that most owners do just that, and that at the end of the sit they send the owner a photo of the key back in the box.
What goes wrong
A box can seize. Time To Pet says lockboxes aren't always reliable: they freeze or rust shut, or otherwise stop working. Two keys inside don't help with a box that won't open, so check it opens on the day you leave, not the week before.
Some apartment and condo buildings don't allow them, or have nowhere to hang one. If that's your building, you're down to the two options below.
Keypads and smart locks
For several of these sitters, most clients don't hand over a key at all. One says only about a fifth of their clients still use a key and almost every home in their area has a code.
Another puts about 85 percent of clients on lockboxes or coded locks. In a third thread, one sitter says almost all of theirs have keypads. Most of another's clients program a temporary code for the sitter's dates.
Under a sitter's post telling owners to buy a key box, one reply says keypads are the best: just give them the code.
A security-camera maker's guide to finding a sitter ranks the two the same way: a door code first, a lockbox second. A keypad or a smart lock does the box's job with no key to lose.
The catch is batteries. A sitter who does long stays keeps a mechanical way in for them, because a keypad can lose its battery and the power can go out.
Another had an electronic lock's batteries die while the owners were two weeks away in Italy, and asleep when the sitter tried to get in. The sitter had asked them to check the batteries before they left. Their emergency contact only had a code too.
A code is a fine first answer, but for a long trip, leave a key somewhere the sitter can reach it. A box on the back door is where that key can live.
If a key has to change hands
Some buildings won't let you hang a box, and some sitters you'll trust with a key anyway. Borrow the sitters' own rule: tag the key with a number, never your address. One sitter assigns each client a number, so a lost key carries nothing that identifies a house.
Another says no addresses on keychains, no matter what. A reply tells of two clients who handed over keys with the address on them, and had to be walked through what a stranger would do with that.
Where to start
Start with the box, hung on a knob round the back where nobody passing can see it. One key and a small ring go inside, the sitter tries the code with you standing there, and the code changes once that sitter's done.
Then leave, and wait for the photo.
