1st Rate Pet Services Summer 2023 recap

It’s been one crazy, tumultuous challenging year for us here at 1^st Rate Pet Services! I had a webpage as our home page on 1stRateLife.com for awhile with the updates since it was the best way to make sure people knew what was going on. This blog post is a compilation of main ideas from the March-June, 2023 saga for anyone who didn’t catch the live version!!!  Blessedly, things are calming down a bit now.

Our scheduler, Leashtime, went down. It was just gone, apparently they had a server crash or something. The same day, my phone just died. I didn’t drop it or anything, it just went to sleep and wouldn’t wake back up and the shop couldn’t fix it.

In a panic, I created the “Leashtime Down, phone broke” website page, hoping when people tried to use Leashtime, they’d check our main website and see the note.

Leashtime still down, I began searching for other scheduling options, but all of them are outrageously expensive, we were “grandfathered in” at a really good price with Leashtime since we’d been with them very early on. My phone came in the mail, but my service provider was having tech issues with activating new phones, so I still wasn’t connected. More notes to email me with schedule requests and call/text Don if any issues.

My new phone was up and running, but I lost a lot of my contacts because my other phone was one version too old to transfer from the cloud, and since the phone itself was a really irritating paperweight by this time, I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t look anyone’s number up on Leashtime, since it too was down. I put a note on the website to text or call me and tell me who you were so I could add you back in to my new phone contacts. Everyone was being VERY helpful and understanding during this stressful time!

I was about over Leashtime, so started researching our invoice service provider, 17Hats, to see if I could use them as a scheduling option also. It was a lot different than LeashTime, but seemed to be working alright for those who were using it.

I got a job as a “Lunch lady” with Marion County Public Schools. In 2022 we lost a number of pet customers (passing away), some of which were only pets. A few of our customers moved away also. The end of 2022 and beginning of 2023 were way slower than usual due to these things, and I’d been looking around for a job I could do “around” the pet sitting. I wanted it to be with a Florida Retirement System employer since I only had to work 1 year and a few months to be vested since I’d worked for the state when I lived in Pinellas County in the 1990’s. At that time, I didn’t even care about the retirement money they were saving for me, but now I sure do!

I took down the new 17hats schedule link because I was not as open as I used to be to take pet sitting requests last minute, and Don was going to be in Iowa for about 3 weeks in May, so I put back up the “email Julie” for scheduling info.

This was a lovely day (NOT). I posted a photo of Don’s ruined Ford Transit van with a note that he’d been in an accident while in Iowa. It was the other driver’s fault, and sadly he didn’t have any insurance. We only had liability coverage, so the van was totaled and sent to a junkyard. Don was now without a vehicle while in Iowa. He was hurt, but not devastatingly, which is a blessing. This was the moment I officially decided we need to tighten up our service area. I’d been considering it for around a year, but it was a difficult thing for me to do, so I kept putting it off. With my job and the accident leaving us with no back up vehicle, and Don with limited mobility for who knows how long due to his new back injury caused by the accident, it seemed like the only option. When he returned from Iowa (with a rental car his kids had helped him pay for, bless them,) he was in so much pain from the accident that I had to do all of the pet visits for the next three weeks, in addition to working as a lunch lady. I was exhausted and so grateful when school was over for the summer!

This was the last date on the “Leashtime down, phone broke” page. I’m just going to copy and paste the actual “blurb” for that one here….

July 27, 2023

So here we come to today, the actual day. It was a crazy summer with not only everything above, but also a few more challenges and surprises. About a week after Don got back, lightning struck a tree in our yard. Thank the Lord it didn’t land on our house or car, but it caused a big, downed tree mess and a power surge in our house that took out a number of electronics, an air conditioner and a light switch. Then 2 days later, during another storm, the top of a second tree that had been struck but not damaged at the time came crashing down on the roof of our covered back porch, crushing half of it. You can see some of the mess on our YT page here…

By this time we were somewhat numb to all of the stuff happening! We also were having issues with the Kia, which before had been the “back-up” car, but since the van was gone, it was Don’s only car, and we had to spend $$ we didn’t have to get that fixed a few times. I don’t know exactly how Don felt about everything, but I was afraid to leave the house, but whenever it thundered, I was terrified that we’d have another lightning strike or that another tree would fall ON our house this time.

I’m kind of getting over that now, 1 and ½ months later. In July I was blessed to have two week-long pet visits out of the area so was paid to “live-in” and that $$ helped keep us afloat after all the car repair issues.

So as the summer is winding down, we have referred a number of our customers who are out of our new, smaller service area to other pet sitters. At first it was so hard for me to let go of anybody, but I’m realizing I can’t take care of ALL the pets in the whole world, and I’m so happy to know other sitters I like and trust to take over. All of the customers have been so understanding and so supportive of us, I’m humbled, and relieved!

Another unexpected but exciting thing happened in April. I went to a job fair for the Marion County Schools, thinking instead of a lunch lady, maybe I could get an easier physical job (food service is HARD physical work!) Imagine my surprise when I was informed that I qualify to come in as a middle school Language Arts teacher with a temporary teaching certificate because of my Bachelor’s degree from 34 years ago having enough random English classes on it. I was very surprised, but said yes, and will be teaching sixth grade Language Arts for the 23-24 school year!

Don will still be doing pet visits full-time as he works on other projects he has going on. We are being selective about taking on anyone new so as not to overwhelm him. We still work with 2 other ladies who do visits for us sometimes, and I’ll be offering overnights to select customers as I can do them and still be at work all day teaching. This gives me the chance to still be with the pets, which was the hardest thing to let go of when I decided to get a “real” job again. I feel like overnights offers me a “win-win” situation!

We both have other things going on as well, but unless something unforeseen happens, will still have some version of 1^st Rate Pet Services going for the next few years. Who knows what might happen when I’m able to retire!