Reply from pawshake.comAug 13, 2026
Hi Gill,
Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback.
We understand that you are disappointed that your profile was not approved immediately, particularly as you are new to offering pet sitting professionally. However, we do want to clarify that the requirements you describe are not intended to assess whether someone is a photographer, nor are they specific to dog walking.
At Pawshake, a sitter's public profile is effectively their business card. It is the first thing an owner sees when deciding whether they feel comfortable entrusting their pet to someone. For that reason, we expect profiles to contain genuine, relevant photos showing the sitter caring for and interacting with pets. This helps owners get a meaningful impression of who they are potentially entrusting their animals to.
We don't apologise for having standards around this. In fact, the requirement is deliberately there to distinguish between people who are genuinely committed to building a professional pet-sitting profile and those who expect to be able to sign up and start offering services with minimal effort. Entrusting someone with your pet is a significant responsibility, and we don't believe creating a trustworthy and informative profile should be treated as a quick, five-minute task.
The fact that you have experience with cats, qualifications, insurance and previous reviews is certainly valuable, but those things don't make the profile requirements unnecessary. They are all different pieces of information that help an owner make an informed decision.
The purpose of the photos is simply to demonstrate that you are comfortable handling and interacting with the types of pets you intend to care for. If your existing photos don't sufficiently demonstrate this, then it shouldn't be too difficult for you to solve with a cameraphone.
We appreciate that you have found another platform whose lower profile requirements better suit what you are looking for. We genuinely wish you all the best with your pet-sitting business there.
However, we won't be changing our application requirements as a result of this review. They are designed to produce high-quality, informative sitter profiles and to ensure that the people joining Pawshake understand that offering pet care through the platform requires a degree of commitment.
Ultimately, the decision to use Pawshake is yours, just as the decision of where to entrust their pets is an owner's. Our role is to maintain the standards we believe are appropriate for the community.
Kind regards,
Pawshake Support
Updated response:
We are also disappointed that you appear to view this as a Pawshake problem rather than a profile-completion issue that is entirely within your control to resolve. Building a professional pet-sitting profile should not be a five-minute exercise, and we make no apology for expecting sitters to invest some time and effort into presenting themselves appropriately to potential clients.
If obtaining a handful of suitable photos is being presented as an insurmountable obstacle, then it is reasonable for us to question whether the level of effort required to build a professional pet-sitting profile aligns with your expectations of running a pet-sitting business.
