Most of what Checkbook hears from pet-sitting customers is positive, but there are enough negatives to warrant caution. If you use a commercial service, you give a stranger access to your home. Unless you arrange for overnight care, your pet will still be alone for long hours. Whether the sitter is from a commercial service or is a neighbor, you can't be sure of the skill or diligence they bring to the job. The sitter can get mail, water plants, and make your house look occupied.īut pet sitters, too, have their disadvantages. Your pet won't be stressed by staying with other animals. Your pet stays in familiar surroundings and continues familiar routines. Having a pet sitter come to your home has significant advantages. But you may burden a friend with the responsibility, and the pet may suffer separation anxiety. Your pet won't be alone overnight, and you'll avoid some inconvenience and expense. If you want to take a dog along, check out the list of hotels and motels that accommodate pups from AAA's Traveling with Your Pet website.įriends, family, neighbors, and pet sittersĪnother option is to leave your pet with a friend or pet sitter. And you shouldn't leave your pet alone in a car, even briefly. If your pet isn't accustomed to car travel, it may become anxious. Dogs have died of heatstroke in airplane baggage compartments. Animals have been left for hours in airline handling areas or shipped to wrong destinations. Pets may be terrified or injured if they are treated roughly by airline baggage handlers. But your accommodations may not allow pets and having a pet along may be inconvenient. You'll share the experience with them and avoid the expense and trouble of a sitter or a kennel. To help start your pet-care search, here are some things to consider. If you go with the kennel option, by visiting /StarTribune/Kennels, readers can access Twin Cities Consumers' Checkbook's unbiased quality-and-price ratings of local facilities free of charge until July 5. Once you have an electronic version, you can easily use find (Ctrl F) to search the brochure for any topic of concern.If you can't take your furry friend along when you leave town, caretaking options include hiring a pet sitter, asking a friend to pet sit and booking a stay at a boarding kennel. Nonetheless, downloading brochures is easily accomplished, and vital to final plan selection. Some of the increase represents increased clarity through plain English, some is due to increased complexity in plan benefits, and some is due to unnecessary detail. For local plans, brochures grew over the same period from 16 to 65 pages, on average. In 1990 the average national plan had a brochure 29 pages in length ten years later the average grew to 77 pages. Unfortunately, health plan brochures have mushroomed in length. They are particularly well designed to facilitate comparisons among plans by consumers. Indeed, compared to most public and private insurance, the FEHB brochures are models of clarity. We agree and endorse OPM efforts to assure that brochures are consistently and clearly written. Do not rely on statements not contained in the brochure. You cannot fully rely on this, however, since OPM has stated that the brochure is the only official description of the benefits provided by each plan. In some cases a plan does not mention a service at all in its brochure, but has assured us that its claims manual (which is not available to employees) says the service is covered. Plan brochures are necessary to determine what benefits each plan covers, or does not cover. You can download PDF copies of plan brochures at the Checkbook, OPM, and plan websites, and either use them online or as print copies.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |