Sitters Fill Void for Latchkey Pets

Nancy Brown, a computer specialist who commutes from Lancaster to Chatsworth, spends about 14 hours a day away from her mixed terrier Bubba and her black Labrador Nikki.

In dog hours, that’s nearly a whole week.

To ease the hunger and loneliness of her pets on days she’s away even longer than normal, Brown hires Lancaster professional pet-sitter Donna Enstad, who says commuters represent a growing portion of her business.

“When I started my business in 1989, I had no commuters--none,” Enstad said.

Now, 30 of Enstad’s 60 regular customers in Acton, Lancaster, Palmdale and Rosamond are commuters.

Her telephone answering machine even targets them. “If you are a daily commuter, what do you do with regard to your home and pets if you are unable to return at your usual time?” the recorded message says. “My customers call me.”

Brown first called Enstad two years ago. For a fee of about $10 to $15 a visit, Enstad will let pets into the house, feed them or walk them if a customer is planning to be late or to not come home at all.

“Sometimes I’m just too tired to drive,” said Brown, who budgets $150 a month to pay for Enstad’s services. “I have some friends and relatives I crash with.”

“It’s a strange relationship,” Brown said of her dealings with Enstad. “I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her. We’ve talked hundreds of times. It’s always a kick to see what note she leaves--we call my dogs the kids.”

Long Beach animal behavior specialist Miriam Yarden, who works with misbehaving dogs and cats, said pet-sitters for commuters are a worthwhile innovation.

“The most disastrous problem is boredom, which causes pets to do just about anything for entertainment--incessant barking, digging, chewing and escaping,” Yarden said. “I’ve seen damage done by a Maltese that would make a Great Dane proud.”

Lancaster clinical psychiatrist Oscar Jaurigue, whose patients include quite a few commuters, said pet-sitters can help remove one element of the stress that pet owners feel while stuck on the road.

“Some of them are so stressed out . . . they want to be sure that their pets are taken care of because they may be the only friends they have,” he said.

Data collected for the 1990 U.S. census showed that the percentage of Lancaster residents who commute more than an hour grew from 10% to 17.1% of the population during the 1980s; among Palmdale residents the percentage who spend that much time getting to work grew from 14.8% in 1980 to 36.2% a decade later.

In Palmdale, pet-sitter Cindy Dallas is entrusted with the keys to the homes of 30 to 40 Antelope Valley commuters, as many as a dozen of whom will call her on any particular day.

Sometimes the requests for service come with very little notice. February’s flooding and April’s rioting in Los Angeles made it difficult or impossible for many of the Antelope Valley’s 40,000 residents who commute elsewhere to return home. That resulted in a big increase in her business.

“They’re very pleased to know I’m on the other end of their drive and that I can take care of their pets,” Dallas said.

Louise and Mark Ramirez, who commute from Palmdale to jobs in Redondo Beach and El Segundo, have come to count on Dallas to fill in for them and care for Kody, an Akita; Cassie, a Labrador retriever-German shepherd mix, and their cats, Buster and Cinnamon.

“We use her a lot,” Louise Ramirez said. “I never have to worry.

“If anything happens where we can’t get home or it’s going to be extremely late before we get home, I can call Cindy.

“When I’m not here, I don’t want them to feel, ‘Mom and Dad, aren’t here,’ ” she said, referring to her pets.