You're leaving town for a week, and the question is keeping you up at night. Do you hire someone to come stay at your place, or do you send your dog somewhere else to stay? It feels like a small decision until you're standing at the door with your bags, watching your dog watch you. We hear this one constantly at the clubhouse, and honestly, there's no single right answer. There's only the right answer for your dog. So let's actually talk it through.
If you've already read our piece on in-home boarding versus a kennel, this is the next fork in the road. That one compared two places you'd send your dog. This one is different. Here we're weighing a sitter who comes to your home against boarding your dog away from home, and the two have very different blind spots.
What a pet sitter actually gives your dog
The pitch is lovely, and we get the appeal. Your dog stays in their own bed, in their own home, surrounded by their own smells. A sitter (often booked through an app like Rover) drops by, walks them, feeds them, maybe stays overnight. For some dogs, especially anxious ones or seniors who find any change hard, staying home really is the gentlest option. We won't pretend otherwise.
And there's a real argument that home is calming. The University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine notes that separation anxiety can be triggered by a change in geography or routine, so keeping the geography familiar makes sense for a dog who unravels easily. If your dog's whole world is that apartment and the park down the street, a sitter keeps that world intact.
The gap nobody mentions: the hours in between
Here's the part that breaks our hearts a little. A "sitter" booking is usually a few visits a day, not a person living in your home around the clock. Thirty minutes in the morning. A walk at lunch. An evening drop-in. The rest of the day, your dog is alone in a quiet apartment, just like a normal workday, except now it's days on end with no one coming home at five.
That matters more than people think. One study cited by the same University of Illinois vets found that 80 percent of dogs show elevated stress hormones when left home alone. Familiar walls don't change the fact that a social animal is by itself for fourteen hours at a stretch. And in Montreal, those hours get a sharp edge in winter. The January normal at Trudeau airport is a mean daily low of -14 degrees Celsius. Ask yourself, plainly, who is taking your dog out for the last pee of the night at -14, and is anyone actually checking that they did?
Socialization isn't a luxury here. It's the law.
This surprises a lot of dog parents. In Quebec, socialization isn't a nice bonus you tack on. Section 8 of the province's Animal Welfare and Safety Act requires whoever has custody of a dog to provide the stimulation, socialization and enrichment that fit the animal's biological needs. The same Act (section 5) spells out adequate exercise and protection from excessive cold as legal duties of the owner or custodian, and that word custodian includes a sitter or boarder while your dog is in their care.
A few solo walks a day can meet the bare minimum. But dogs are pack animals who light up around other dogs. The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association's kennel code puts it simply: dogs are social animals and benefit from interaction with their own kind and with people, and a lack of enrichment can tip into boredom, anxiety and destructive behaviour. A sitter doing drive-by visits can't really give your dog that. Supervised play with compatible dogs can, and that's the whole reason our boarding looks the way it does.
The insurance fine print, since someone has to say it
We don't enjoy being the ones to bring this up, but it's your dog, so here goes. App-based sitters often point to a "guarantee" as proof you're covered. Read it closely. The Rover Guarantee says in plain language that it is not insurance. In Canada it reimburses eligible vet costs up to a cap, carries a minimum member contribution of $250, and, this is the part that stopped us, it explicitly excludes anything that happens during a Meet and Greet or outside confirmed booking dates. Pre-existing conditions are out too.
So the very first time a stranger meets your dog, the moment you'd most want a safety net, you may have none. We think that's worth knowing before you book, not after.
How to vet a sitter who "hosts" dogs
Some sitters don't come to you. They host your dog at their own place, which blurs the line with boarding. If you go this route, a little Montreal knowledge protects you. City bylaws cap a home at a maximum of three dogs, or four dogs and cats combined, so any legitimate home setup here is small by law. If a "home sitter" has eight dogs crammed in, something's off. And anyone walking more than three dogs at once legally needs a dog walker license, which the city can refuse over past animal-welfare convictions. That's a fair credential to ask about.
Quebec adds another layer worth checking. Anyone keeping fifteen or more dogs or cats needs a MAPAQ permit, and inspectors evaluate the premises before issuing it. For an extra layer of comfort, ANIMA-Quebec keeps a public list of certified pensions and daycares you can look up. None of this is meant to scare you. It's just the homework that separates a real caregiver from a nice profile photo.
So what does it actually cost?
Money matters, and the gap is smaller than people assume. Across Canada in 2026, dog sitting runs from roughly $25 to about $50 a day once you add overnights and walks, while bare-bones kennel boarding can be as low as $15 a night here in Quebec. A vetted in-home stay lands above the cheapest kennel, but it's right in the same ballpark as paying a sitter for full care. The difference is what you get for the money: a real home and supervised company, instead of a part-time visitor or a concrete run.
Where in-home boarding fits: the honest best of both
This is where we'll show our cards. We built our boarding to take the good parts of each option and quietly drop the bad ones. A sitter gives a real home but leaves long gaps. Boarding solves the company problem but usually trades the home for a facility. Our in-home boarding keeps the real home, adds a dedicated caregiver who's actually there, and folds in supervised play with compatible dogs, all from $65 a night. It's the staycation a social dog actually wants.
And the piece we're proudest of is the front door. Before any stay, we do a Meet and Greet, a relaxed first visit where your dog explores at their own pace and you meet the person they'll be staying with, face to face. Remember that app guarantee that excludes the Meet and Greet entirely? We made the Meet and Greet the required first step of ours. That's not a coincidence. It's the difference between hoping your dog is comfortable and watching them tell you so. Dogs with anxiety, puppies, or pups who just prefer one-on-one can book private overnight boarding instead, and our littlest guests under 10 pounds have a tiny dog program built just for them.
So, sitter or boarding? If your dog is happiest truly alone at home and just needs a reliable human checking in, a great sitter is a fine call, and we mean that. But if you'd rather your dog spend the week in a real home with someone genuinely watching and a few good dog friends to nap beside, come see what we do. Maïka, our three-legged Chief Dog Officer, and Max the Boston terrier will vouch for the place. Book a Meet and Greet, call us at (514) 778-CLUB, or visit us at 1800 Sainte-Catherine St E. We'd love to meet your dog.