What Do I Do With My Pets During Showings?

For all my fur baby parents out there this post is for you!!!  A lot of my clients have fur babies and a question they ask me is what to do with their pets during showings so we’re going to dig into that!  I’m a fellow fur baby mama so I totally get the question!

It’s really important to me and my clients that when we list their home and the showings begin, that we're being mindful of what to do with their pets because it can be a big deal for them to have people in the home and we want to make sure that we set you up for success.

Cats

Generally speaking if you have cats, I’ll just tell you to do whatever you normally do with them, we’ll note that you have them in the showing notes for agents to know but otherwise it’s usually easy because cats will generally hide under the bed or run when buyers and their agents see the home. You can always put a note on the front/back door to ask them not to let the cat(s) out if necessary.

Dogs

I have four doggie fur babies and counting.. they're the best ever!! They all have totally different personality types – one is super friendly to strangers and another one wants to bite everyone’s head off that comes in the door!  It doesn't matter the demeanor of your dogs, I'm still going tell you the same answer. For showings, you’ll either need to put them safely in kennels that are in the home or take them off property during showings.

Kennels

The reason I say this is for a couple of reasons.  The first being we never know who's coming in your home. They may not be a dog person or they may have kiddos with them and the kiddos may not know how to be around animals in a nice way.  We also don't want to put your animals at risk in the event they get territorial which is completely normal for dogs when strangers enter their home. I have the nicest dogs in the world but hen they get into a situation they're not happy with, the tails go up and the big barking starts happening. We don't want them in a position where they feel like they have to defend the home, which can happen even if they're super sweet dogs.

If you do kennel them in the home and they're barkers like mine, my recommendation is to put the kennel in a room where the buyers are likely just going to pop their head in and move on. Good rooms like that would be the laundry room, secondary bathrooms, a secondary bedroom or even a secondary bedroom closet to where they're just going to pop in and pop out.  I would recommend avoiding having the kennel(s) in main areas like the living room, kitchen, and master bedroom because usually these are areas where buyers spend more time visualizing themselves living in the home and we don’t want them distracted by a barking pet.  Putting a blanket over the kennel can also help your dogs feel more secure.

Some clients ask if they can just put their dog in the garage or out in the backyard during showings and I usually don't recommend putting them in the garage or the backyard for a couple of reasons. One, in Texas, at least our weather is so unpredictable. I do not want your dog or your animal in a hot or cold garage or outside. Also, buyers and their agent are going to be in those areas of the home checking out the garage and backyard.

Doggy Day Camp

If there's no way to kennel your dogs at home, you aren’t open to that, or you just don't want to put your animals under that kind of stress and you can’t take them with you , a lot of my clients will take their dogs to doggy day camp so their dogs can have fun while the house is being shown.

Showing Restrictions

If you keep your dogs out during the day and aren’t open to kenneling them and you work outside the home to where you can’t get them for showings during the week then we may have to set up showing blocks during those times, but that's going to be a last resort. A showing block is like a restriction saying that like from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM the home can’t be shown.

I don't like doing that because it restricts showings, but I will do that in lieu of having someone enter the home where there's a dog out.