House and Pet Sitting Services

That's an interesting site, Laurel. (Though it does cost $119 one-time to join - which would easily pay for itself quickly with one trip.)

My question is: how do you know you can you really trust the sitters? These seem to be not locals but other travelers - maybe someone who wants to come to Oregon for a few weeks while you're away. Free lodging for them after $119 to join is a great deal. But what happens if my pet gets loose or something while I'm gone? What if they need to leave a week early? This could be someone from out of town I'd never see again; if I hire someone locally, there seems to be more incentive for them to be reliable, somehow. Someone who paid $119 to join and then flakes out seems to have little to lose except being banned from the site.

I understand your concerns, Andrew. You will see that many sitters have criminal background checks and references. I review all of that, as well as their written applications looking at motivation. I winnow down the group to a few and do Skype interviews. I also construct a contract. TrustedHouseSitters helps with all of this.

The sitters are interested in good references so there is motivation to complete the assignment, do a good job. I know not everyone would do this, just as not everyone would do a home exchange. But it is an option.

No way. I can't imagine entrusting my dogs to someone who is willing to take care of them for free, outside of close friends and family members.

On our last trip to Europe (October 2017,) we boarded two of our dogs at our vet's office. They stayed together in a large run that we call the presidential suite. The vet techs love our dogs and our dogs love them - relationships forged from the joys and heartbreak of living with dogs. This was not cheap. Our youngest dog stayed with her breeder for free. I could relax and enjoy our trip because I knew our dogs were completely safe.

I have heard too many stories about dogs who get loose and are lost forever while under the care of someone from a pet-sitting service - someone who was getting paid to look after them.

We're fortunate that we've never had to resort to strangers in our house while we were away. We've always had good neighbours who were happy to check the house out every other day or so, and we do the same for them. When we had pets, they went to stay with one of our daughters.

A few of our neighbours are snow birds who spend several months in warmer spots for the winter. They hire a local property management company who do the requisite house checks to satisfy the insurance people, and also handle snow removal (grass cutting in the summer). If course these guys take their pets with them, sice they're gone so long.

I know people who use house sitters all the time. I guess we never felt that need. We secure the property and have a near by cousin who checks on the house a couple of times a week. Never had a problem in 40 plus years.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I can't imagine having a stranger in our house, taking care of our beloved dog. I did take a brief look at the website and it seemed too good to be true. That's a big red flag for me, but I'm glad it worked for you.

In case anyone is interested, this is what I have done and now do.

Twice I have left my dog with friends who insisted on taking care of him while we were gone. It was not a good thing for him or them. I will never do that again.

I much prefer leaving him at a well-regarded local pet boarding facility. He's stayed there so many times that he's excited to see the people who take care of him and totally ignores us when we drop him off. I just count the daily boarding fee as part of my trip expenses.

As for the house, we live an hour from the center of town by car. There is no public transportation. It's highly unlikely that anyone would want to stay here in the desert, with the typical desert wildlife.

It's even more unlikely that I would feel comfortable having anyone stay here. What if their ignorance of the environment results in them getting hurt? Would they sue us? What if it results in hurting our dog? I'd never forgive myself for leaving him with a stranger.

We do have neighbors. I tell them when we'll be gone. One usually has a key to the house and the code for the alarm in case of an emergency. I put some lights on timers in different rooms with different on and off times, so it looks like we are home.

I also contact the Sheriff with the dates for the trip, and someone drives by to check on things a few times while we're gone.

Those pieces of my home and dog care while I travel may sound complicated, but it is much simpler than house or dog training strangers.

I should add we have had incredible good fortune with friends and friends-of-friends pet-sitting as well, both in Roma and here in the U.S. A couple of those fine folks are frequent posters here on the Forum. :-)

Pet sitting for travelers is surely a difficult problem for some and a FAQ though I haven't seen the topic discussed here recently. I can see how a company like TrustedHouseSitters might pop up and try to fill the need.

I am lucky that I have only one healthy cat, and I am on good terms with neighbors with whom I swap cat care when we travel. But I still feel guilty leaving my cat for more than week with just feedings twice a day. She's an affectionate cat who needs lots of attention. My neighbors love her but obviously can't spend all day with her. I have left her for three weeks this way more than once, and I wish I could find a better way to care for her. Obviously I could just pay someone to stay there (yeah, I know most cats don't really need that much attention, but mine would love it). But that gets really expensive.

The key with finding a good sitter I think is trust. I trust my neighbors with my cat because they trust me with theirs and because I have known them for years. I might trust someone local I'm paying $50/day to stay at my place with good references, but it would be much, much harder for me to trust some stranger from out of town no matter how good the references, no matter how good the Skype interview and online "reputation" is. People can turn out to be quite different than they seem. I just wouldn't be willing to take the chance.

But there still seems like some sort of opportunity here for some sort of online pet sitting matching service. I might have a hard time trusting a stranger, but I'd have an easier time trusting someone I know personally. What about a friend of a friend? A friend's personal reference means much more to me than some website's references of a stranger from out of town. And that's where something like Facebook might come in: because you can connect to people who know each other. I'm sure for example there are people near me who maybe have roommates or something and would love staying at my place for a few weeks while I'm gone, because my cat is easy and fun. I'd do it if I could find the right person, and I'd probably travel more.

Lo,

Your situation sounds exactly like something I would be very happy to be in. I love desert critters. I love dogs and have never met one that didn't love me. Spending a week or two out in the desert is exactly the type of vacation I am looking for. But would I expect you to let me stay at your house and take care of your dog or even just drop in a couple times a day to feed the dog? Absolutely not. We don't know each other other than from reading each other's postings here. More importantly, your dog doesn't know me which could lead to some unpleasant results. It just isn't that easy to find someone you trust to look after pets.

As one of Laurel's cat-sitters, I think finding someone on a forum like this, or through an agency, is a good idea, using Laurel's precautions.

My solution for now is no pets, no plants. Neighbor's kid takes the mail for a (tiny) fee.

I don't want to come across as soliciting for business, but I am a house/pet sitter since I sold my house and decided to travel full time. I belong to a similar site as Trusted House Sitters, but most of my sits are word of mouth now. I regularly sit for people I met on RS tours as well as through the other home sitting site. There is nothing like a long-term on the job interview via a RS tour.

The process to be hired as a house sitter from an on-line site does require a degree of intense investigation to determine if the sitter is one that you can trust. I insist that the homeowner calls not only my personal references, but prior sits from the other on-line site so they are not getting a one-sided reference. For me, the real reference comes from those that hired me on-line. Not everyone has family or friends that can provide the care needed for pets as some require medication schedules, special diets, or become too stressed being placed in a boarding situation and I want to believe that I help to fill that gap. I'm selective about who I sit for and expect the homeowner to be just as selective in choosing me. I am one of those that do not charge for sits as I don't need the income, but if a homeowner wants to make a donation to my travel fund I won't turn it away either.

If you do due diligence, on-line hiring of a sitter can be a mutually beneficial endeavor.

I'm on the fence with this one - on the one hand, I think it makes perfect sense to find someone local, preferably a neighbor - after all, that's what neighbors are for... On the other hand, I found out the hard way that the vast majority of suburban dog owners (at least in the area where I live) have absolutely no idea what their dogs' needs are. There are probably a dozen dogs living in our street, some of them pretty serious breeds (a fila brasileiro, a Doberman, a giant schnauzer), and only one of them (a poodle) has ever gone through any kind of a basic training (some dumbed-down version of AKC canine good citizen), and only a couple are ever taken out for structured walks on a leash. I would personally be very uncomfortable dog-sitting an adult fila that has never been trained basic obedience.
Likewise, I would have a hard time letting any of those dog owners (wonderful people as they are) anywhere close to my dogs.
I noticed that European dog owners are - on average - a lot better educated about their dogs' basic needs. Now, when it comes to handing my house keys to a complete stranger, albeit with stellar references - i'm not so sure...

I can relate to Laurel's post. As many of you are aware through some of my post responses, we travel to Europe for a month or more every year doing a direct house exchange. Our home exchange agency has several other categories to check besides straight house exchanging. They have non simultaneous exchanges, hospitality offered and pet care offered or needed. While we've never checked the pet sitting box, I'm aware of other people on this network who sometimes travel for extended times while a member of homelink stays in their home watching their pet(s).

I think you'd do all of the questioning and reference checks you'd do for a straight pet sitting agency but with the home exchange network, there is already an element of trust that comes with getting to know the people who want to experience life in your country.