Biggest Travel Concern - My Pets
Our beloved pets. Whenever we’ve planned a trip one of our major concerns has been care for our dogs. We have two dogs, and both are medium-sized, so they’re not the type you can throw in a handbag to travel with you. And there’re really not “comfort animals” – how many really are? – so we always need to make some arrangements for them to be boarded or dog-sat.
Over the years we’ve tried a lot of different strategies. We’ve always been skeptical of kennels and dog-walkers. (Doesn’t every owner picture their dog sitting in a cage all day, or getting a 5-minute walk by a distracted teenager?) And how about the cost? As with everything else, the cost of quality pet care keeps going up, and although many options now exist with sophisticated online notifications and “tracking” devices, all of them can add a big expense category to your trip. We found a family nearby to watch our two dogs, and we felt pretty good about the care they would get, but each dog cost $30/day. We were trying to plan a 3-week trip; that’s over $1200 for pet care – more than a couple of plane tickets!
We wanted to plan a “Bucket List” trip to South America, and it was going to be close to a 3-week absence. We tried to talk our daughter into being our pet-sitter. She lives a couple of hours away, and she is gone at work all day, but she loves the dogs and was seriously considering it. She talked about making a point to come home over lunch to give them some exercise, and she looked into nearby walks and dog parks. Ultimately, though, she learned of a new option (for us at least), and she passed it along to us to consider. It was a pet-sitting service called TrustedHouseSitters.
Who’s gonna watch us?
Here’s how it works: basically you trade the use of your home for someone to watch your pets and your home. If you’re looking for a sitter, as we were, you list your house and your pets on a website that advertises places needing sitters. You add all the essentials like dates, type of home, location, facilities, information on your pets, and responsibilities expected of the sitters. Once you post your notice, you wait for responses. We were lucky; we live in Florida and we were looking for sitters in January. Predictably, we got several applications from folks in Canada and northern parts of the US. But this is a worldwide platform and has been around for a few years, so we heard from Germany, the UK, and even Crete. We found out that some people travel the world this way; they comb the site looking for attractive places to visit where the pet duties aren’t too onerous.
I should add that both the sitter and the pet owner have some minor background checks done. Both get rated from previous experience, and so you can read reviews to help you gauge a sitter’s experience and performance. Homes (and pets) get rated, too, so everyone gets a sense of what they’re facing. In our case, we got 14 applications in the first 24 hours, and they all seemed pretty good. I was able to “Pause” our listing to give myself time to catch up and review the applications properly. We narrowed the list to the four best, and then interviewed our top two choices by videoconference (FaceTime.)
One thing that I found interesting (and appealing) is the fact that there are a lot of seniors involved in this program and many couples. It makes sense. Retirees now freed from the pressures of work schedules are looking to travel to interesting places. Maybe they’ve lost pets of their own, and for now have decided not to get a new pet, but rather get their “pet fix” by watching someone else’s critters. I was trying to be skeptical of everything, but as I reviewed a lot of photos of people and pets and read testimonials, I saw a great idea really working. Adorable animals, happy people, and lots of smiles. We decided to give it a try.
The video conferences left us with the impression we were talking to people just like us. Retired, active, pet-lovers, and interested in travel. More importantly, they were responsible people with real accomplishments in their lives who were enjoying this “adventure” with TrustedHouseSitters. In fact, our top two finalist couples were both “keepers.” We had a very tough time deciding between them.
In the end we decided to offer a different period of time (also in winter) to the runner-ups (a couple from Ontario) for the January job. The site gave us an option of offering a private invitation to just that couple. In a short period of time we were able to lock in pet-sitters for two trips on the horizon. They were going to have a warm winter holiday in the Sunshine State, and we were going to have some responsible folks watch our home and our pets.
My blogs have been focused on trips so far. This clearly is a different topic. But when you consider all the aspects of trip-planning, anyone with pets has a big issue to address. On TrustedHousesitters you can apply as a sitter or a pet owner. It’s easy and affordable (there is a modest annual fee to participate.) For a 25% discount use this link: https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/refer/RAF283233/
Some of you reading this might want to try trading some pet-sitting for a free place to stay. It’s better than Airbnb, if you like the duties that go with it. And if you need help from someone to watch your pets during travel, check out TrustedHousesitters. It was an answer to a prayer for us; and many others have raved about their positive experiences.
Getting good care while Mom & Dad are away.
