As much as she loves cats and dogs, Sarah “Bolty” Bolton doesn’t own any pets. She prefers “the cool aunt” role over full-time pet parent, which led her to start her own pet-sitting business, the Central Coast resident explained.
“Pet-sitting is a way that I’m able to get my fill of puppy love and kitty love, … and at the end of the day I can give them back to their ‘paw-rents,’” Bolton said. “I also don’t have children, and I feel similarly. I love kids and I love being auntie to my friends who have kids, and I get my fill of being around kids and the imaginative little beings that they are. … I love being the cool aunt.”
Through her pet-sitting business, which she aptly named Auntie Bolty, Bolton offers to watch her clients’ four-legged friends anywhere between an hour or two to overnight stays and longer periods of time.
Some patrons have hired her to pet-sit—and essentially house-sit—for up to a month or longer at a time, which Bolton is open to thanks to her lifestyle as “a digital nomad,” she said.
“I actually don’t have a place of my own. I really am a nomad,” Bolton said. “I stay wherever my gigs are. I have been super fortunate staying at some really, really, really beautiful homes.”
In between pet-sitting assignments, Bolton either stays with her partner in San Luis Obispo or crashes with friends in the area. Couch surfing doesn’t interfere with her work outside of pet-sitting, Bolton added, since her other role is a life and business coach for entrepreneurs—specifically, solopreneurs—mainly centers on consultation calls via Zoom.
“My calls are 45 minutes or an hour long. Usually in between, I have little breaks so I can go for a walk with one of my doggy clients, or scoop a litter box if I need to,” said Bolton, a member of the Women’s Network of SLO.
“I love working with women in business, a lot of solopreneurs, because I have done that myself,” she said.
Bolton described her philosophy as both a solopreneur and nomad as embracing opportunities to go off-script when it comes to societal norms.
“I think people are so accustomed to following scripts of what you’re supposed to do—what society told you, or what your parents told you you needed to do when you grew up—and turns out you can just do whatever you want,” she said. “The rules are all made up.”
If there’s at least one rule Bolton follows before agreeing to look after someone’s pet or pets, it’s refusing to take on an assignment that “doesn’t feel like a win-win-win all around,” for her, the client, and their beloved furball.
“I typically don’t take on dogs who need like 10 miles of walking per day, that’s not my jam,” she said with a laugh.
A dog like that’s in better hands at “a boarding facility where there’s lots of space to run around,” added Bolton, who typically requests in-person meet-and-greets with potential patrons and their pet or pets before signing on with them, especially for overnight or multi-night stays.
“I want to make sure I get along with their pets and their pets get along with me,” she said. “It’s a very vulnerable decision.”
Bolton said she often gets booked in Pismo Beach, Arroyo Grande, and other cities in SLO County, but is open to pet sitting for residents across the Central Coast, including Santa Barbara County.
For info on pricing, based on time, number of pets, and other factors, Bolton welcomes messages through her Instagram account, @boltythepetsitter, where browsers can also take a look at some of the adorable critters she’s hung out with over the past year.
Some of her favorite pet-sitting memories are about cats and dogs that seem shy at the start of Bolton’s stay but open up by the end of her visit.
“I had a client who had a rescue dog who was really afraid of new people and would hide out. By the time they came back, she was like my best bud,” Bolton said. “I stayed there for about four nights. It was probably about day two-and-a-half that she started to warm up to me.”
Fast fact
• Driscoll’s recently pledged $5 million to Cal Poly’s College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences. The pledge will fund a new farm store to anchor Cal Poly’s 6-acre Plant Sciences Complex. Construction will start in 2026. Set to open during the summer of 2027, the farm store will serve as both a retail and research hub, while offering Cal Poly students learning opportunities in product testing and consumer engagement. ∆
Reach Sun Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood, from New Times’ sister paper, at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 23 – Nov 2, 2025.