There is a category of nanny placement friction that families rarely anticipate, and that experienced nannies have encountered often enough: the pet situation that wasn’t disclosed. The dog that wasn’t mentioned in the job description. The cat allergy that didn’t come up during interviews because the family assumed pets were a given. The nanny who arrives on day one to discover that a sixty-pound dog who jumps on people is part of the daily reality of the position, and who was never given the opportunity to decide whether that was a position she wanted.
This isn’t a fringe issue. Pets are present in a significant portion of the households where nannies work, and the question of how the nanny relates to those pets, what her responsibilities include, and whether she was informed before she accepted the position is one that comes up in nanny employment more than families typically expect.
What Nannies Are Actually Divided On
Experienced nannies don’t have a uniform position on pets. Some love dogs and consider them a feature of the household rather than a complication. Some are indifferent to pets and happy to work around them. Some have genuine allergies that make certain pet situations medically unworkable. Some have a specific fear of dogs rooted in prior experience that isn’t going to resolve because the family’s dog is friendly. And some have a professional view that pet care isn’t within the scope of their childcare role and that being expected to manage a dog’s needs alongside childcare represents a scope expansion that wasn’t agreed to.
All of these positions are reasonable. The issue isn’t which position a nanny holds. The issue is whether the family disclosed the pet situation clearly enough during the hiring process for the nanny to know what she was agreeing to.
What Disclosure Actually Needs to Cover
Mentioning that the family has a dog is not the same as describing what that means for the nanny’s working day. A dog that spends the day outside or in a different part of the house is a different situation from a dog that is indoors, requires attention and management, and interacts regularly with the children and the nanny throughout the day. A family with a well-trained dog is a different environment from one with a dog whose training is a work in progress and who jumps, mouths, or requires active management around the children.
What families should disclose before a nanny accepts a position: what pets are in the household, where they spend time during the day, whether any pet care responsibilities are included in the nanny’s role such as feeding, walking, or managing the pet around the children, and any relevant information about the pet’s behavior and temperament. A nanny who has this information can make an informed decision. A nanny who finds out by arriving is in a position she didn’t consent to.
The Scope Question
Whether the nanny is expected to provide pet care alongside childcare is a scope question that belongs in the employment agreement. Some families expect the nanny to feed and walk the dog as part of the daily routine. Others handle pet care separately and only ask the nanny to manage the pet’s interaction with the children when both are present. These are different jobs, and the compensation structure should reflect the difference.
Nannies who are willing to include pet care in their role generally expect it to be acknowledged explicitly rather than assumed, and they expect it to be reflected in the compensation conversation. The nanny who is caring for two children and also managing a dog’s daily needs is doing more than the nanny who is caring for two children in a pet-free home, and the family that treats the additional responsibility as obvious and unremarkable is communicating something about how they view the scope of the role.
At Seaside Nannies, the families who address pet disclosure early avoid the awkwardness of discovering a mismatch after a nanny has already started.
