Foster City Exotic Pet Sitter
Foster City is a community built for people who travel — a master-planned grid of lagoon-facing condos and single-family homes wedged between Highway 92 and the Bay Trail, within a fifteen-minute drive of SFO and a short commute to Gilead, Visa, and the EA campus nearby. Many of our Foster City clients are on rotating conference circuits, biotech trial sites, or extended international travel. The question they keep asking us is the same one: when I’m gone for three weeks, who’s keeping my chameleon’s UVB cycle on schedule, or watching my holland lop for the first quiet signs of GI stasis? That’s the gap our team of exotic pet specialists fills. We travel out from San Francisco across the 92 to provide in-home visits that are structured around clinical observation, species-appropriate husbandry, and the kind of documentation a working professional needs to actually unplug.
Why Foster City Residents Trust Our Exotic Pet Specialists
- Built for commuter schedules. Foster City’s workforce doesn’t keep a 9-to-5. We coordinate around red-eyes out of SFO, multi-week conferences in Boston or Basel, and clinical trial travel — including long-duration visit plans where we become your pet’s consistent caregiver across weeks, not just a weekend.
- Waterfront condo & HOA-aware. Many Foster City homes sit in gated lagoon communities with fob access, garage codes, concierge desks, and visitor logs. Our specialists are used to managing layered building access, signing in at front desks on Bayport and Admiralty, and handling multi-step key drops in Edgewater and Marlin Cove.
- Clinical-grade care, not hobby pet sitting. House of Guineas was founded by Alexandria, an exotic veterinary assistant who volunteers with the House Rabbit Society administering subcutaneous RHDV vaccines. Our specialists are trained in that same approach — watching for subtle changes in appetite, respiration, and droppings that most sitters miss entirely.
- Species specialization that matches Foster City’s demographic. The tech-and-biotech household pet profile in Foster City skews toward reptiles (bearded dragons, crested geckos, ball pythons) and smaller small mammals. Our team is fluent in temperature gradient management, calcium dusting schedules, and hay-forward small mammal diets — not generalists Googling at your kitchen counter.
Exotic Species We Care For in Foster City
- Small mammals: rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, ferrets, hamsters, rats
- Reptiles: bearded dragons, leopard and crested geckos, ball pythons, corn snakes, box turtles, red-eared sliders, tortoises
- Birds: African greys, Amazon parrots, conures, cockatiels, budgies, lovebirds, finches
- Amphibians (on request): frogs, axolotls, newts
If you’re keeping a species not listed here, call us — if our team can’t provide the level of care your pet deserves, we’ll tell you up front and help you find a specialist who can.
How Our Foster City Visits Work
1. Complimentary meet-and-greet. Before any booking, one of our exotic pet specialists drives out to Foster City to meet you and your animals at home. This is when we learn your lagoon-side condo’s parking situation, which garage gate code we’ll need, whether the HOA at Shearwater or Isle Cove requires a sign-in log, and where you keep hay, substrate, supplements, and emergency contact info.
2. Key, code, and access setup. For gated waterfront communities and condo towers, we’ll document concierge protocols, elevator access, and whether packages need to be collected en route. Many of our Foster City clients leave a lockbox on the garage side — we’re happy to work with whatever your building allows.
3. Scheduled daily visits. Most exotic pets do best on a twice-daily rhythm: morning husbandry (fresh hay, UVB on, misting, food prep, enclosure spot-clean) and evening wind-down (feeding check, lights-off cycle, droppings log, behavior notes). We send photo-and-text updates after every visit so you can check in from a hotel in Singapore or a biotech site in Cambridge without wondering whether the dragon basked today.
4. Flexible extended-travel coverage. For clients on three-week-plus trips — which is common in Foster City — we can layer in midday enrichment visits, mail retrieval, plant watering, and a detailed daily health log you can review on your flight home.
Foster City Villages & Neighborhoods We Serve
- Marlin Cove
- Bayport
- Dolphin Bay
- Edgewater Isle
- Isle Cove
- Admiralty
- Shearwater
- Schooner Bay
- Whalers Cove
- Mariners Island
- Treasure Isle
- Sand Cove / Cambridge
If your home sits on Beach Park Boulevard along Central Lake, near Leo J. Ryan Memorial Park, or along the Bay Trail stretch past Foster City Beach, we know the route.
Pricing for Foster City Visits
| Visit Type | Starting Rate |
|---|---|
| 30-minute in-home visit | from $85 |
| 60-minute in-home visit | from $115 |
| Routine 2x/day care | $140–$190/day |
| Exotic pet boarding (at our SF home) | $75/night |
Foster City sits in our Peninsula service tier. A travel surcharge applies and varies depending on our specialists’ availability and your specific location within Foster City — lagoon-side condos near Highway 92 tend to be quickest for us to reach, while homes closer to the Belmont Slough side may carry a different rate. Call us for a custom quote.
Boarding is hosted separately at Alexandria’s San Francisco home — Foster City clients are welcome to drop off for longer trips, especially when you’re flying out of SFO and it’s easier to swing through the city first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you come to Foster City? I see you're based in San Francisco.
Yes. Foster City is part of our Peninsula service area, and our team of exotic pet specialists travels out across Highway 92 regularly for in-home visits. Because we coordinate multiple Peninsula households on any given day, scheduling can be tight around holidays and summer travel peaks — we recommend reaching out at least two weeks in advance, and earlier if your trip falls over Thanksgiving, winter holidays, or summer conference season. A travel surcharge applies and depends on your specific Foster City location and our specialists' availability.
My HOA requires key/code sign-ins — can your team handle condo access?
Absolutely. A significant portion of Foster City housing is condo or townhome stock with gated entries, fob access, garage codes, and concierge desks — this is our normal operating environment. During the meet-and-greet we document everything: building sign-in protocol, gate codes, elevator fobs, visitor parking rules, and package handling. Our specialists carry multiple clients' access credentials in a secured system and never leave keys or codes in unsecured locations. If your HOA requires our team to be added to an approved visitors list, just let us know during the meet-and-greet and we'll provide the necessary info.
Can you accommodate our frequent work travel schedule?
This is one of the most common asks we get from Foster City clients, and yes — frequent, predictable travel is actually easier for us to plan around than one-off trips. Many of our Peninsula households have us on a recurring basis: standing twice-a-day visits during conference weeks, a lighter once-daily cadence during shorter trips, and boarding at our SF location for longer travel when that makes more sense. Once you're an established client, rebooking is quick, and your pet's care plan, meds, and preferences are already on file so there's no ramp-up each trip.
Do you know local Peninsula exotic vets if something goes wrong?
Yes. Our team maintains an active referral list of exotic-experienced veterinary practices across the Peninsula, including All Pets Hospital in San Mateo, Peninsula Pet Hospital in Burlingame, SAGE Veterinary Centers in Redwood City, and Adobe Animal Hospital in Los Altos. During the meet-and-greet we'll confirm your pet's regular vet and ask you to pre-authorize care at a specific emergency clinic so there's no delay if we notice a concerning change during a visit. For a broader list of exotic-competent vets across the region, see our San Francisco Bay Area exotic veterinarians guide.
What's the cost of in-home exotic pet care in Foster City?
Base rates start at $85 for a 30-minute visit and $115 for a 60-minute visit, with standard twice-daily care plans running $140–$190 per day. Because Foster City sits in our Peninsula tier, a travel surcharge applies and varies based on our specialists' availability and where in Foster City you're located. Boarding at our San Francisco location is $75 per night and is often the better option for travel longer than two weeks. Call or text us for a custom quote based on your species, visit frequency, and trip length.
Ready to Book?
If you’re a Foster City resident with a bearded dragon that needs consistent UVB scheduling, a rabbit that needs clinical-eye observation, or a parrot that needs more than a neighbor dropping by — our team is ready to help. Learn more about why working with an exotic veterinary-trained team matters, review our in-home exotic pet care services, or look into boarding at our San Francisco location. For husbandry-specific prep before your next trip, our guide to preparing your reptile for pet sitting walks through exactly what to leave out for our specialists. More general questions? See our full FAQs or call or text (415) 484-6493 and we’ll put together a plan that fits your travel schedule.