Additionally, i do wish you the best finding a dog walker. Perhaps there are some reliable legal services, but I have not been able to find even one. But let me give you a few more examples from other dog / pet owners I know of dog walkers/ pet sitters working out poorly:
- a neighbor went on vacation for 2 weeks to the UK. illegally left care of two cats to another neighbor's FDH (not a FDH from our housing complex, but from the neighborhood). The FDH watching the cats was summarily terminated when her employers found out she had undertaken part time work and sent packing (found out from other helpers in the neighborhood several weeks after the fact). FDH did not contact my neighbor to let him know she would be unable to continue caring for the cats. cats were starved, one went into kidney failure and subsequently died and the other was severely dehydrated and malnourished when he got back. his home was quite nearly destroyed by the smell of cat urine.
- FDH takes on a part time job as a dog walker (this time for a colleague's dog). Things work okay for quite a while. FDH's family relocates from HK island to the NT, and FDH cannot continue walking dog. Dog owner has a vary hard time finding another (illegal) FDH to take on the position and dog is left alone too long during the day for several months until a replacement is found. Behaviour problems develop with bored dog.
- Angry neighbor reports FDH of their neighbor who is illegally walking another neighbor's dogs because Angry neighbor does not like the dogs or their owner. Immigration visits. FDH is expelled from HK. FDH's legal employer is fined (although not hugely because they honestly didn't know she had taken up PT illegal work behind their back). FDH's illegal employer (the dog owner) is fined a large sum, threatened with jail and forbidden from hiring a legal FDH for several years. This happened recently at Bel Air.
I could go on, but the point is that hiring a FDH illegally is a big risk and you actually can get into a lot of trouble for doing it, although plenty of people will tell you that they have done it for years with no problems. Also, if an illegal FDH does anything bad to your pet, you cannot report it because you will get into a lot of trouble for hiring her.
I do wish you all the luck in the world in finding a dog walker, and there are some companies that do purport to do this legally, for example We Wish You Were Here ( http://www.wishyouwereherehk.com/petsit.html), although they could not find a long term daily walker for us.
Would also like to hear from anyone who has a good, legal long-term dog walking arrangement (as our helper is going home perminently within the next year to start a family). We tried everything, high school students living closeby, the government job boards, adverts (in Chinese) in local supermarkets and even an add a local paper that my secretary helped us place and came up empty, but maybe we missed something.