With Kim away in Wabash this weekend and me taking the family (Carolyn, John, Charlotte & Evelyn) up to L.A. for the weekend, there remains the issue of “What About Buddy?” We are very attached to this little 7-pound fur-ball that can’t keep his yap shut. Our Buddy program consists of flying in Natasha to sit for long vacations, taking Buddy to Colean’s doggy day and overnight care and local kids who are looking to make $15/hr. In-home dog sitting runs comparably to babysitting on an hourly basis, so let’s see where those trends have taken us. Babysitting rates have climbed dramatically over the years. In the 1960’s it was all informal and usually by flat fee. In the 1970s it was around $0.50 – $1.00/hour based on personal recollection. My the 1980s-90s, rates gradually rose into the $1-3/hour range as minimum wage increased, though it was still largely an informal, cash, teenager-driven market. The first solid data is from 2012, when the average rate for babysitting was $12.75 per hour, based on UrbanSitter’s first child care study. In 2020, the average rate for babysitting one child rose to $17.73 per hour, and two children to $20.30 an hour, an increase of 39% from 2012. And now, in 2026, the national average babysitting rate is $19 to $29 per hour depending on location, with $26.24 per hour being the average nationwide. A few things drove the shift: babysitting went from an informal teen side-job to a more professionalized gig-economy service (Care.com, UrbanSitter, Sittercity), rates now vary heavily by city (San Francisco and Seattle run highest), and factors like number of kids, driving duties, and experience level all push rates up further. It’s les complicated with dog sitting. According to Airtasker’s 2025 national data, dog sitting rates are at $14.98 per hour, noticeably cheaper than babysitting per hour, but still not cheap. Those local kids love the work because like babysitting under the right circumstances, its getting paid to watch TV, play video games or do your homework and spending 10 minutes max out of every hour playing with or walking the pup.
The overnight comparison is noteworthy (this is where dog sitting can actually catche up or exceeds babysitting), a full night of babysitting at ~$26/hour × 8 hours would run roughly $200+. Overnight dog sitting typically ranges from $40 to $150 per night, depending on whether you’re a casual sitter or a professional business, with the average overnight visit rate among professional pet sitters at $96.66. Colean charges $45 for any daytime visit of any length and $75 per 24 hours for an overnight stay, so better than the national average. Of course, while doggy daycare is not a kennel with all that trauma and rigor, it is still living in a group home, though Buddy has endeared himself into the premier position of favored pup who gets more attention and better seating/sleeping position than other less-well-established boarders. This is obviously why he is better behaved at Colean’s than he is here at home, where his position as king of the hill is uncontested. Babysitting demands continuous active supervision, but dog sitting is less active with a lot of “care” being passive (the dog sleeps most of the night) rather than constant hands-on attention like child care.
Kim and I prefer, whenever possible, to make the process of being away from Buddy as easy on him as possible, so we prefer to have someone stay with him in our home. That means we are OK paying a premium for the local sitters on an hourly basis or flying Natasha in for her intensive Buddy-care for longer absences. Natasha gives Buddy her full attention and takes him on outings, usually to the beach or parks where he can get exercise and she can enjoy her “vacation” in Southern California. Buddy thrives during her visits though I’m sure he notices that the whippet-thin Natasha does not offer him treats as often and Kim and I do. Buddy is also very fond of Colean and Colean’s daughter Brett and he is always OK with spending time with them. He is even OK with the other caretakers that Colean hires because he is used to being over there and it all feels very familiar to him.
I will take Buddy to Colean’s tonight after dinner and will take along a bag with treats and his favorite dinner food…enough for three days. It won’t really matter, because in the same way that Buddy adapts with what we call his “Love the one you’re with” attitude, he will just as often eat the other dogs’ kibble and not pay so much attention to the hand-cut roast beef that Kim has prepared for his dinners. I’m sure he wins points with his dog pals at Colean’s when he willingly shared his roast beef in favor of kibble. I remember trading off friend chicken for a hot dog at a picnic when I was a kid and could tell that that the grad student friend of my mother’s was thrilled with my simple tastes that afforded him a nice picnic upgrade.
Some people will say that dogs have no ability or awareness of time, but that can’t be so. I’m sure dogs do have some sense of time, though it’s not like human clock-based awareness. Dogs can distinguish between different durations of time. Studies have found that dogs left alone for longer periods greet their owners more enthusiastically than those left for shorter periods, suggesting they register duration. That’s certainly the case with Buddy. Dogs have strong internal clocks tied to light, routine, and biological cues (hunger, energy levels), which is why many dogs seem to “know” when it’s dinnertime or walk time, especially if the schedule is consistent. One leading theory for how dogs track time is that they smell the gradual fading of a person’s scent in a room. As the scent weakens over hours, the “strength” gives dogs a rough sense of how long someone’s been gone. Their time sense is more associative and physiological, tied to routine, hunger, light patterns, and scent rather than a mental clock. But dogs all vary, just like humans, and as for Buddy, when we drop him off he doesn’t know how long it will be for. Kim thinks all our dogs could anticipate our return. I’m skeptical of that, but she swears by it (as do Natasha and Colean), so who am I to disagree.
After our whirlwind weekend in the City of Angels, I will pick Buddy up from Colean’s on Sunday afternoon and he will be good and excited to see me. He will then get another burst of excitement when we get home and he realized that Carolyn, John, Charlotte and Evelyn are back as well. I wonder how long it will take in that confusion for him to realize that Kim is not back yet? He will get a third dose of return excitement on Monday when she flies back from Wabash. So, trying the best spin on it that I possibly can, I think we have properly solved the Buddy dilemma for this weekend, though we always feel somewhat guilty any time we leave him for a day or two or more, but that’s our dilemma, not his.