As we’ve been pet sitting full time since 2018, over the years we’ve developed and expanded our own kit to take with us to every house sit we complete. Dog owners always provide us with everything we’ll need to care for their pets, however we sometimes come across items at house sits that are so helpful or innovative, that we’ve ended up investing in them ourselves so we can have these products with us every time we care for dogs! Below are just a few of our top picks from our pet sitting gear that we think will change your dog sits for the better:

Dicky Bag

This is the number one item on our list because it has been a complete game-changer for us! One of our favourite parts of dog sitting is going for long walkies with new four-legged friends, especially if we’re staying at a rural house. There’s nothing like strolling through open countryside with a dog, but what do you do when there aren’t any poo bins for miles around? Enter Dicky Bag – a portable, odour-free bag for carrying dog waste! Simply grab a poo bag (we love these home-compostable ones from Beco) then tie up your dog waste and pop it in the bag until you find a bin! Dicky Bag also have air freshener disks that sit in the bottom of the bag to keep it smelling fresh. We have a few different styles, but we love the neoprene bag – it’s water resistant and is machine washable at 30 degrees!

Dicky treat bag

While we’re singing Dicky Bag’s praises, we LOVE our matching neoprene treat bag. Use the zip to fill the bag with dog treats, then access them via a small slot at the top for quick-to-grab treats on the go – we find it’s roomy enough for a lot of them!! You’ll be able to carry tonnes of treats out on walkies and your new four-legged friends will thank you for it. It’s perfect if the dog you’re looking after responds to food, or if they like stinky or fresh treats, as grease and smells don’t penetrate the neoprene fabric! As with the regular Dicky Bag, the treat bag is machine washable at 30 degrees in case you need to give it a freshen up after use.

Tick remover tool

If you’ve ever had to remove a tick from a dog using tweezers, you’ll know how difficult it is. After one particularly stressful experience at a dog sit when a little terrier came back from a walk covered in the horrible things, and we spent almost an hour removing them all with tweezers, we invested in a tick tool to carry with us to every pet sit. Our first time using the tick tool, the removal took all of five seconds! We couldn’t believe how well it worked. Now we safely remove ticks from ourselves and our four-legged friends with these little hook tools, so neither us or the dog has to undergo unnecessary stress.

Chuck-It balls

The ultimate ball for endless fun and games, these Chuck-It balls take fetch to the next level!! We first discovered how fantastic they are at a house sit in Hove – Chris threw one along the beach for our Saluki buddy Jem, and we both watched as the ball bounced from spot to spot, and it just kept going! Speedy Jem got such a good work out playing with these balls that we now recommend them as the best ones to own! We carry them everywhere, so much so that Chris once got stopped at an airport as he had one in his jacket pocket… The best thing about them is their bright orange colour, which makes them easy to spot in tall grass or on open fields. They’re super durable with an extra-thick rubber core, and the smooth surface means we can easily wipe it clean and put it back in our bag – good as new for doggos at our next house sit!

Apple AirTags 

We never let a dog off lead on our walkies unless we’re 100% sure that they have good enough recall, and will come to us when we call them. We love to let dogs run and sniff freely, though for extra peace of mind we invested in a set of AirTags. These little trackers from Apple allow you to track things from your iPhone. Suze made a small fabric case for one of ours and we clip it onto a dog’s collar when we’re out on walkies while pet sitting, so we know we can easily see where a dog has disappeared to if they decide to chase after something!

Foldable dog bowl

Early on in our pet sitting journey, we found a small silicone bowl in a deserted car park and added it to our dog sitting toolkit. It became a valuable part of our gear – small enough to fold and fit in a bag but sturdy enough to hold lots of water for dogs on walkies. By the time that one unfortunately got chewed up at a dog park, it had become such a useful item to us that we immediately found another one to add back into our essentials! We always carry a silicone bowl on our dog walks now, and we love that this one has a carabiner to clip onto our bag so the only thing we need to hold onto is the end of the dog lead! 

Ring security camera

If we ever need to leave dogs at home for a short time, for example to do our food shopping, we set up this easy-to-use camera from Ring. This enables us to remotely monitor dogs from our phones while we’re out, giving us extra reassurance while we’re pet sitting. The camera also has a function where we can talk through the in-built speaker via our phones – we’ve used this in the past to tell dogs to stop barking at the front door when a delivery has arrived, and once to tell a Jack Russell to get down off a dining table…! It’s super easy to set up with the Ring app and enables us to keep an eye on the dogs while we’re away from the house.