According to predictions from relevant departments, there will be approximately 9 billion people traveling, visiting relatives, and leisure during this year’s Spring Festival travel period. The cross-regional flow of people across society may hit a record high. During the Spring Festival, many people choose to go home to celebrate the New Year or go out for fun, but their pets can only stay in the city, so many people choose to keep their pets in foster care.
As the Spring Festival approaches, the pet consumption market begins to heat up, and the prices of pet care-related services generally rise. The foster care services in some pet stores are even “hard to find”. Will you pay for the cute pet economy?
Ms. Wang from Anhui has a cat that she has kept for four years. This year, because she and her family will go out of town to celebrate the New Year, she made an appointment for foster care services at a pet store in advance.
Ms. Wang: You need to provide vaccine certificates and prepare enough cat food yourself. During the foster care period, the pet shop will not only be responsible for the pet's eating, drinking, defecation and littering, but also take care of the pet's health. During the Spring Festival, the pet store where I was fostering also provided paid bathing and grooming services, and could also take videos of the kitten for me at any time, allowing me to understand its status in real time.
The reporter learned that as the Spring Festival approaches, pet stores in many places are facing the problem of finding a litter of foster care services. In a pet store in Beijing, store manager Jin Yan said that the store now has 8 cats and 4 dogs that have made reservations for foster care during the Spring Festival. There are not many foster care spaces in the store and reservations need to be made in advance.
Jin Yan: 80 yuan a day on weekdays, 100 yuan a day during the Spring Festival. Bathing is chargeable and depends on the size of the dog.
In addition to this type of in-store foster care, there is also a higher-end foster care method, namely the pet paradise, to meet the daily play and training needs of pets. In a cute pet store, the staff told reporters that they have a special pet dog boarding paradise, which provides three room types of different sizes and different prices for pet dogs. Now many room types have been basically booked during the Spring Festival. Related during the Spring Festival The fee increase is around 50%.
Staff: We have our own foster care paradise. During the Spring Festival, there are only one or two ordinary rooms left. An ordinary room is a small cubicle of about 4 square meters. The price for small dogs is 192 yuan a day. There are also sun rooms and VIP rooms. The sunroom is a room of about 9 square meters, and the price for small dogs on holidays is 252 yuan a day. The VIP room has an independent courtyard, and the price for small dogs is 357 yuan a day during holidays.
The cost of pet sitting during the holidays is a significant expense. According to Feng Jiao, a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Ningxia University and head of the Digital Economy and Intelligent Management Research Institute of Ningxia University, in addition to the superficial demand for pet foster care, there are also deeper reasons that make consumers willing to pay for it.
Feng Jiao: The pet economy is essentially a typical emotional economy. As the quality of life improves, people's spiritual demands for companionship and companionship have escalated. Pets can entrust people's strong spiritual emotions and make pet owners feel psychologically happy.
It is worth noting that there are also many irresistible factors in the foster care process. For example, pets will have a stress reaction due to fear when they come to a strange environment, which often easily leads to a decrease in the pet's resistance and illness. Regarding disputes that may arise from fostering pets, Li Bin, a lawyer at Beijing Zhongwen Law Firm, reminded that when fostering pets, you must confirm the store's qualifications, pay attention to the store environment, and sign a foster care agreement with the store to confirm the issue of liability during the foster care period.
Li Bin: The corresponding pet name, health status, charges, service content, and risk responsibilities must all be clarified. If, as a pet store, you fail to fulfill your obligations related to foster care and the pet is harmed, you should also check what standard the agreement provides for compensation.
In addition, reporters also noticed that when searching for "home feeding pets during the Spring Festival" on social platforms and second-hand trading platforms, a large number of personal order information will appear, and some comments and inquiries have reached more than 100. This kind of personal door-to-door feeding service is generally cheaper. However, some pet owners still have concerns about door-to-door feeding. For example, if the pet scratches a person, will they need to bear relevant responsibilities? It is difficult to guarantee the qualifications of the door-to-door personnel, etc. .
Li Bin: Under normal circumstances, as long as a pet hurts someone else, the pet owner must bear responsibility. Of course, it also depends on whether the person who comes to provide services has done anything wrong to the pet. For example, whether he has used teasing or provoking methods to tease the pet, so that the pet has a stress reaction and attacks it. It depends on the specific situation. If you have a camera at home, this can be used to collect evidence. But if an accident occurs outside, how to collect evidence is an important issue. Therefore, it is best for pet owners to disclose the characteristics of their pets and what issues they need to pay attention to as much as possible to the relevant door-to-door service people. The people who provide door-to-door service also need to have certain experience in pet feeding.
Producer丨Wang Lei
Reporter丨Kong Ying Sun Lingjuan
(Voice of China)