ArcaMax

You are one of this person’s clients, and – just like other clients – you will need to book your appointments well ahead of time in order to secure your slot in their increasingly crowded schedule.

You should talk to the dog sitter and explore your options. Their other clients cannot insist that this person cannot walk dogs for other clients while dog sitting. It is the sitter’s responsibility to serve various clients responsibly.

There are many in-home pet services advertising their business through various apps and websites. It might be time to find a reliable backup for those times when your regular person is not available.

Dear Amy: A few years ago, I realized that I could afford to send small amounts of money, $25, $50 and, once in a while, $100 to worthy charitable organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, the National Geographic Society, Habitat for Humanity, etc.

I am now practically buried by requests for money from the 30 or so charities I’m supporting, with letters coming two or three times a month, from each charity, long after I’ve sent in my yearly check.

I recently took a massive box-load of these request letters to my recycling bin after an 18-day trip.

It’s a terrible waste of paper and so hard on the environment.

How can I make them stop? I thought of writing a letter that says I will donate one time a year and if you send me one extra appeal I will stop altogether, but I think that no human would ever see it and stop this inundation of paper.

And an aside, I get mountains of return address labels that I’m now throwing away (I used to cut them up) and I wonder if this is a bad idea. Could someone get into my trash and use those return address labels for some nefarious reasons?

By the way, even the museums I belong to do this same thing: long after you pay your membership fee, they keep hounding you.

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