Picture this scenario: You leave for a conference or a client-visit for a week-and-a-half, requesting a friend or a sitter to feed your Goldfish, every alternate day. As luck would have it, due to an emergency your dear friend or sitter is hospitalized, and unable to touch base with you (so you’re not even able to secure any backup). You return only to find that your dear Goldfish has passed on. You’re heartbroken!

Or, worse yet, you own horses on a farm, who were to be let out at 7:00 AM, but were found (by your parents) in the barn even at 12 noon. As they were letting the horses out, they are approached by a man, who comes with keys to your house, informs them that the pet sitter had a car accident in the morning and deputed him to fill-in for her, and that he could just make it now. Certainly makes one wonder: how can one have reliable home pet-care without the attendant worry, anxiety, and (sometimes) heartbreak?

This is what happened to Lisa Herickhoff, a molecular biologist and now founder of PetZCheckIN, who began thinking about how to build the proverbial “better mousetrap”. Much clever thought and software effort, lead to development of the PetZCheckIN.com system, which, in our view, is deceptively simple (even though, from a software perspective, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes).

It is a great tool that both pet-parents and pet-sitters can use very effectively. The service provides a consistent, fool-proof way to avoid the tragedies alluded to above, by ensuring that your primary pet sitter (friend, family, or professional sitter service) is contacted if for some reason they are unable to arrive within a window of time (say, between 5:30-6:30pm Tuesday), and can also contact a series of backup contacts who you’ve spoken with (and designated in advance in the system). Not only that, the system automatically sends you an update (over email on your I-Phone or Blackberry or cell phone) letting you know the status – when someone arrived to take care of your pet, whether your pet was fed/let out/walked/given their medication (as the case may be), and (if you wish) when the caregiver departed. To us this means one thing: peace-of-mind!

For a pet-sitting service or pet-sitter it provides a way to offer a much better level-of-service to their clients, while for the pet-parent it provides freedom from the stress and anxiety that accompany us when we have to leave our beloved companions behind during a trip, travel, or vacation. There are several other aspects of the service, which you can discover by visiting their website.

From The Pet Sentinel’s perspective what was interesting was that our informal chat with Lisa brought up a number of question of home pet care vs boarding, professional sitters vs friends/family, being able to take a break or a vacation without being worried for one’s pets (if one cannot take them along), and how to ensure that the interests of one’s furry critters are safe-guarded, without imposing on the generosity of one’s friends or the demands on a professional sitter’s time? And, we realized these are issues worth exploring in an Expert Fireside Chat ™!

So, as is our norm, we’ve invited Lisa to come and share her thoughts with us, on an upcoming Fireside Chat™.

In the meantime, we would love to hear from you, our readers and VIP Alliance members, how you have handled your pet-care needs when you had to be out of the house, and/or leave your pets behind? What have been some of your trials and tribulations? And, what do you think would have helped you? So, join the conversation! Let us hear your views. Woof!