What is it about Traveling Pet Sitters?
Traveling pet sitters. Free ones, at that. What’s so funny about it? I mean when you read the articles, it sounds like a dream come true. Stay at resort like locations and homes while traveling the whole world and never pay for accommodations. Can it possibly be that easy? Is it really that good?
We ARE traveling pet sitters!
Yep, we are one of those, free traveling pet sitters that is. We’ve been to Mexico, Africa, Spain, the UK, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Belize, Canada and most recently, Florida, all for pet sitting. Then why am I laughing while reading some of these articles? (And before you ask, we pay for our own flights / transportation.)
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The Nitty-gritty of pet sitting.
Well, let’s just say that most articles don’t quite tell the whole story. Or maybe the writer just hasn’t really gotten into the nitty-gritty of being a traveling pet sitter. You know. Like the time we were sitting in Mexico and had to take the cat to a Spanish speaking vet. Poor thing had gone into renal kidney failure. It turned out fine with the vet hydrating him and sending us home with a very bland dry food diet made especially for his condition.
Let me tell ya, he was not happy. His owners had an amazing assortment of wet cat food stacked in the cabinet in such a way that he never had the same meal twice in a row. Can you Imagine how p—– off he was? Ya, he didn’t eat for a day and a half, trying to coerce us into going back to his yummy wet food. Nope. Not going to happen.
Our very first experience as traveling pet sitters.
Or how about our very first experience as traveling pet sitters, which was in Australia. We made it to AU but our connecting flight was cancelled. We took a later one – one that got us to the Homeowner (HO) at 10PM and she was planning to leave on an international flight at 4 AM the next morning.
She drove us around in the dark, pointing out the dog park, restaurants, shops, the beach and anything else we needed to know. Basically, it was up to the dog to show us the ropes. Remarkably, he knew the routine very well and took us to the dog park, the beach and then out for coffee and scones.
And how could I forget…. At the same sit, the heater went out in the house. Of course, this is a winter sit! All I can say is, we are thankful for the heat lamp in the bathroom to warm us up after a shower.
Portugal pet sitting in a downpour.
Portugal was fun too. The year we sat they had historical rain that all but washed out part of the half mile dirt driveway into our pet sit. We were in the middle of nowhere (it was beautiful) with torrential rains for over a week. On one of the trails around the home, the rain was so intense it created huge crevices that exposed electrical conduits!
One time, as we drove back to the house, a tree was down across the drive leaving Jack with no option but to hike back to the house to get the chain saw.
More of the same in the UK.
The same year, we had more torrential rain as we headed to a UK sit. At the last minute our train was cancelled. Since the HO was leaving the next morning, we had to get there, so we arranged a car rental over the phone then raced for the airport bus to pick up our car.
Duh! The car is at a rental agency in town. What?! Hello? Nobody told us. Another bus ride back and power walk to the agency. Yes, we did get there in time but it was treacherous driving. However, the homemade Victoria cake and tea the HO had waiting for us made it all worthwhile!
Not all pet sit locations are as advertised.
Belize, a traveling pet sitters dream come true?
That’s a thing too. How the HO perceives their location and how you, the pet sitter, see things, can be quite different. Belize should have been a dream come true. A house on the beach, two kayaks to use, close enough to town that you don’t need to rent a golf cart. The fruit/veggie man comes by several time a week and you can catch crab from the kayak. Snorkeling is great. Four dogs that the HO walks every day on the beach. Chickens with fresh eggs. This will certainly be a traveling pets sitters epic sit! Uh, huh.
A hurricane is on it’s way when we arrived so the kayaks were put up and the garage door sealed. Even if that hadn’t been the case, it’s a quarter mile to the beach and it was INFESTED with mosquitoes between the two. No way could we each carry a kayak to the beach. And, you couldn’t leave one kayak on the beach while retrieving the other for fear of theft.
Oh, and the fruit/Veggie guy only comes during the summer. No, you can’t snorkel from the beach because of the sargassum. No snorkeling, no kayaking, no fruits/veggies and we DEFINITELY needed a golf cart as we were about 9 miles from civilization. Ya, that was a $200/wk X 3 weeks expense!
The HO pointed out one of the chickens that had a respiratory problem but said she didn’t know what was wrong. Several days later, when Jack checked the hen house, we had one dead hen. Our instructions were to take it to the beach and dump it!
A traveling pet sitters perfect location in Australia.
Another sit was advertised as being in a resort town, a beautiful resort town on the ocean with crystal clean water where dolphins are seen daily, fun restaurants, beautiful parks, stunning sunsets. All the pictures on the pet sit website were of the shops, jumping dolphins, swaying palms, happy people. Not.
The sit is actually in a small development a half hour drive away Yes, it’s disappointing. Since the two dogs were fed at 10, noon and 2, it left very little time to enjoy the area. The HO and pets were lovely but we chose the sit for the location.
Missteps while pet sitting.
How do I explain this one – as I certainly have not seen it mentioned before. At one sit, the rooftop patio was a water catchment system. It was also where the 4 dogs like to go to bark at people passing by and occasionally, they liked to poop there too. Yes, there was a reverse osmosis system in place but still.
No bathroom break needed.
At another house with 2 dogs and 4 cats, we had to watch our step every morning. One pooch preferred to poop indoors and the cats occasionally missed their dirt box. I still remember the morning when we had dog poo, pee on a cat bed, cat throw up and diarrhea all at once. Even better was that I discovered the diarrhea as I stepped in it with my furry slippers while cleaning spit off the couch.
I don’t think the cats got along all that well because I came out one morning and found cat poo on the stove top. Days later, as I cleaned the house for the HO’s return, I found dried poo behind a cookie jar in the corner of the kitchen countertop. I considered that as evidence that it wasn’t me but rather how things went sometimes.
A pet sit peeing contest.
The absolute worst were 3 cats we cared for. Numbers 1 & 2 got along fine but number 3 was an outcast and absolutely hated by the first cat. I’ll never forget sitting on the couch with Jack and watching this cat jump up on the couch, turn her little bottom to the back cushions and let loose with a stream of pee. We were used to all of the peeing on the floor throughout the day but this was a new one!
Her nemesis, cat number 3, retaliated days later by jumping up on the kitchen counter and spraying pee all over the upper cabinets, which ran across the countertop down the lower cabinets to the floor. The same cat got up on the countertop later on and in her haste to depart she knocked over a bottle of wine which hit the floor with a crash. Yep, we’ve done our share of clean up duty.
We’re used to the routine cat spit, and occasional accidents are understandable, but all of the above were well beyond the norm – and none of this behavior was mentioned by any of the HO’s. In fact, as we apologized to the 3 cat HO about the broken wine bottle, her response indicated that inappropriate poo-ing and peeing was nothing new.
Pet sitting for cows.
Have you ever pet sat for cows? That was our assignment in New Zealand. Jack took charge of the three cows and my charge was the pony. The HO told us just to call the lead cow’s name when it was time to change pastures and she would come. The other two would follow. Sounds simple enough.
Nope. Animals sometimes do not respond if you are not their owner. Jack called the head cow and she just stood there and looked at him like “you talkin’ to me?” He finally got her to notice and follow him to the new pasture with one of the other two cows tagging along.
The third cow? Now, that’s another story. I called Jack the cow whisperer when I posted the video on FB of him chasing that cow all over the old pasture as she ducked and raced to elude him. He eventually prevailed but it was more on the order of shouting and pleading than whispering that got the job done.
Our last couple of traveling pet sits.
From the UK to the US.
We just finished a sit and were in Maidenhead in the UK for a few nites before going to our last UK sit. It never happened. We’d heard about the virus sweeping the various countries, but the seriousness hadn’t really caught up with us yet. Not until my RN friend texted us, urgently telling us we should come home! Thankfully, we listened.
It briefly crossed our minds to “ride out” this “virus” and rent a little cottage to experience oversees living. Fortunately, the rentals were way too expensive so we started researching going home. We look back on that now and are thankful we didn’t find a rental as we would have been stuck there for two years!
Maidenhead is very close to Heathrow Airport and we were lucky enough to catch the last Delta direct flight from the UK to US. We arrived in Kauai days later. Of course, our pet sitting came to an immediate halt. It was the first time since 2013 we weren’t making traveling pet sitting plans.
Florida
We really miss pet sitting so we signed up for a 3 week sit with 2 indoor cats in Florida. It started off routinely enough. The cats were easy to care for, the house and location were lovely, we had a car to drive and a nice area to explore.
We stopped in an artists coop in town and discovered the artist that was there was from KAUAI! She was shocked and said we were the first people she’d ever met in Florida that were from Island home. But I digress.
It soon became evident that Iniki’s long lost cousin Ian, was barreling down on our location! (Do you recall hurricane Iniki that hit Kauai in 1991? I lost my house in that hurricane.) Yep, we pet sat through a hurricane! The home had hurricane shutters which spared us from the anxiety of watching things fly though the air, wondering if the house would stay in one piece. This whole tale is one for another time but I think you get the point. Being a traveling pet sitter is not for the faint of heart!
Our furry family.
As you might expect, we’re blessed to have furry and human friends worldwide. Although we may not see them in person, we follow several online. And there isn’t a sit that we don’t smile when looking back. Yep, even stepping in poo is funny several years later. So, I hope you can see why, when we read articles about all the glitz and glamour of travel and free accommodations as a traveling pet sitter, we sit back, reminisce, and have a good laugh.
Want to Join in on the Fun?
Being a traveling pet sitter wasn’t much of a “thing” when we started back in 2013. But now, with all the pets that were adopted throughout the pandemic, pet sitters are in much greater demand. All the HO’s who basically went nowhere for two years are eager to go somewhere, anywhere! And more and more pet owners prefer to keeps their furry family in their own home when they go on vacay.
We use TrustedHousesitters, Housecarers, and HousesittersAmerica. When we are interested in traveling pet sitting in a particular country, we check to see if there is a pet sitting website dedicated to that area. Kiwihousesitters and Aussiehousesitters are just two examples of sites we’ve used in the past.
Most all traveling pet sitting sites allow HO’s to post for free while pet sitters pay a nominal amount annually to join. Create a profile and off you go! Of course, there’s a whole lot more to it than that but again, that’s for a different post. Questions, comments? Let us know. We’d like to see you living your best life and making new furry friends at the same time. If you like this post, please follow us here, on FB and IG. Here’s another post on Pet Sitting!
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