How Ocala Pet Sitting Went Cats Only and Doubled Its Google Reviews in Three Months

How did Ocala Pet Sitting start?

Shannon started Ocala Pet Sitting about 20 years ago after deciding not to go to vet school. She had four young kids and had finished a bachelor’s degree in animal biology on the way to becoming a veterinarian. With her kids becoming teenagers and some health concerns, she did not apply, and she was “a lot sad about that.”

A month or so later a woman she was talking to pointed out how many dog walkers there were and said, “You could still work with animals.” Shannon went to the library, found Patti Moran’s book Pet Sitting for Profit, read it, built a one-page website that weekend, formed an LLC and put an ad in the newspaper. The ad brought in roughly her first ten clients.

She did not plan to stay in the business this long. She tried other things and kept coming back, and about ten years in she decided she was all in. “As much as I love the animals, I really love helping people,” she said. Clients told her they had not taken a vacation in decades, or had struggled to get to a funeral, because they had nobody to leave their animals with.

Why did she go cats only?

Staffing and stamina. Shannon ran the business alone for 15 years with no days off. Dogs mean very early mornings and late-night visits, which are hard to staff. Around 2020, when many pet businesses had to change their model, she asked herself what she wanted to keep doing.

She had come to love learning cat behavior, and clients kept telling her how much they loved her and her staff as cat sitters. She had also built a large network in town, so she could refer dog clients to reputable people. Ocala Pet Sitting is now the only cat-only business in Ocala. “I’m a dog person but I own a cat business and I love my cat business,” she said.

When did she stop doing everything herself?

After a health crisis eight years ago. Shannon was very sick for a year and had surgery to remove part of a lung. Her daughter helped for about a year and a half, and her husband drove her to visits when she was too sick to drive. She still never missed one. “The animals don’t care if you’re sick,” she said.

That year convinced her it was all or nothing: get help, or go work a 9-to-5. She tried bringing on help, felt immense relief that it was no longer all on her, and took courses on business, hiring and employees. A few years later her husband had a health crisis of his own, and the team was already in place. She can now take short vacations.

What separates a professional pet sitter from a hobby sitter?

Reliability, accountability and a plan for when things go wrong. Shannon holds certifications in pet sitting and pet behavior, carries insurance, and is vice president of the Florida Pet Services Association. She said professionals do not cancel the day before a trip, most use software that tracks GPS, and they hold themselves to a set of ethics. She points pet owners to Pet Sitters International at petsit.com to learn what to look for.

Her warning about hiring a stranger from a Facebook group: “They might be wonderful until something happens and they’re not.”

Her example was a Thanksgiving Day visit. As she was about to leave, she heard a sound from a second-floor master bathroom in a part of the house the cats did not use. It looked like the cats had run through, turned on the lever handles of a jacuzzi tub and knocked towels in, which clogged the drain. The tub was overflowing. She could not reach the clients, so she called a water cleanup company she knew, and they brought in fans and lifted carpet before mold could take hold.

In 20 years she has walked into five severely flooded homes. A sitter who comes only every second or third day, she said, puts the home at risk as well as the cat.

Where do Ocala Pet Sitting’s clients come from?

Mostly Google. Word of mouth matters, but Shannon said she has always had the most contacts from Google. Early on, when the business was still called Shannon’s Pet Sitting, she got it onto Google while the other sitters she had met in town were not there. She also turned one of her MySpace pages into a pet sitting page, and believes it still helps her ranking. She described herself as “kind of the number one ranking on Google” ever since.

Reviews were the weak spot. For 10 to 15 years they were not on her radar, and for about a decade she had maybe two. Small business coaching taught her to ask with confidence, which got her to 35, but they came in bursts of eight or ten on the same day. With more professionals entering the market since 2020, she felt a few competitors creeping up.

Automating the request changed that. About three months after she started, Ocala Pet Sitting was up over 78 reviews.

What has 20 years taught her?

That the work adds up, and that other sitters are not the competition. Shannon estimates she has cared for “thousands and thousands” of animals. For the first ten years or so she used no software, only spreadsheets. She has met so many people through their pets that when someone greets her in the grocery store, she asks for the animal’s name.

She shares what she knows, sends clients to other sitters and mentors new ones. “There’s enough animals and people to go around,” she said.

The other lesson is to hand things off. She can build a website and do her own marketing, but she does not have the time to be an expert at everything.