Pet/home sitters while on extended travel

PaunchyPirate

PaunchyPirate

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Joined
Feb 3, 2014
Messages
1,823
Location
NW Pennsylvania
Does anyone have any good (or bad) stories to share about using an arranged pet sitter (non-family, non-friends, non-neighbors) for trips up to maybe 30 days in duration? This is for 2 cats. The sitter could come and go, I guess. But I would actually prefer someone who moves in for the duration so the cats have more human interaction. I see some services out there on the internet. I live in a pretty sparsely populated area, so there aren’t many/any locals signed up for these sites. I found one site that has a married couple from England who look to sit in my tri-state area which would enable them to visit American family members.

Just curious if anyone has personal stories to share.
 
We never did have a 'live in' sitter, but we've had a couple of sitters during our pet days and they were awesome. We had three cats.

We were usually gone for no more than a couple of weeks. The sitter would come to our house twice a day for feeding and cleaning the litter box. They would also water plants and bring in the mail, but they didn't have to worry about those chores as we stopped the mail and had no indoor plants.

We gave them our cell number, our vet's number and another person's number that could handle an emergency in case we could not.

We never noticed any changed behaviors in our cats after we had been gone a while. But ya never know with a cat since they all have different personalities.
 
Last edited:
We used one that came "highly recommended" from a friend and had very good reviews on some "pet sitter" website. Long story short...she was terrible. Caught in several lies including not visiting/feeding as stipulated in the contract. When she was called out (because of video footage that she was aware of) she tried to deny it. She went to extraordinary steps to cover her misdeeds. It was really quite eye-opening.

Later, we had a good friend who had a daughter in nursing school. She would stay at the house (except when in school) and did an OUTSTANDING job!

So, I would be VERY cautious who you pick. No matter who you go with, I would HIGHLY recommend surveillance cameras. Of course, none in the bathrooms or bedrooms...and be sure to tell them about the cameras. If they wince at that idea...move on to the next candidate.
 
I've had very good luck with all of our pet sitters. Three visits a day, 2 short, morning and evening for pets and feeding. One long mid day for walks. Longest time was a week and a half, but I would have no reservations for a month.
 
My sister has used "live-in" pet sitters for a couple of weeks at a time. But she met the pet-sitters through neighbors recommendations.
Only one of them didn't work out quite well. He would just let the dog out in the little yard instead of walk him. (Not good for a young dog that is quite active). She could tell because she has a ring camera (which he was aware of) and could see him take him out just once a day for a short walk.
But everyone else she's had stay has worked out great.

My SIL started dog-sitting via Rover. Sometimes the dogs would come to her house for an extended stay or she would stay at the owners home. But most owners started out with a test run for a weekend at first. Now she has many clients that she deals with directly instead of Rover. Maybe give Rover a try if the British couple don't work out?

Another alternative if you cannot find house/cat sitter: I have another sister that has people come to her house twice a day to feed the cats, scoop boxes, bring in mail and water the plants. Her cats do not seem fazed at all when she returns from her travels.

I guess it depends on how sensitive your pets are. Some seem to not care at all. (Most of my pets were in the did not seem to care category). But I did have one dog that had a sensitive personality, so she only stayed with a pet sitter once that she knew very well while we traveled across country. Otherwise we took her everywhere with us.
 
Thanks. These are interesting and helpful. We have a small college in town. I was thinking of trying to find a responsible student who might be interested in a break from their roommates for spell. I’m not sure students would want to come and go (the college is about 2-3 miles away. Maybe.
 
I should add that I’m pretty comfortable that the cats will deal with this without problems. One cat will probably hide from someone who comes and goes. She might get more brave after a few days of the person being there if they were there more full time. But that cat is just very timid. She recovers fine. The second cat is very friendly and social and likes to be around people. They also are fine if I leave them alone for a few days. But I can’t really do that for a month, even with my Litter-Robot.
 
Last edited:
We are using a sitter from Rover that will keep our two dogs in her home. She only does one client at a time and has a similar size dog. This is assuming our cruise around Iceland in July happens. We've never used this sitter or Rover before but we do know someone who used this sitter. The only negative is $$$.
 
When I watched my daughter's two cats when she went on her week long honeymoon, her two cats, even thought they knew me, remained hidden. I would just feed them and clean the litter box and never see them. :D

That was the first time they were left alone by her for any length of time.
 
We are in Palm Springs for 3.5 months. We listed on trustedhousesitters.com and found a couple who will take care of our house and two cats in exchange for a place to live. She is a MD who works remotely, and he is an engineer. They prefer to be overseas but between covid and a chance to stay in one place for 3.5 months they chose our place. We were only listed for about 12 hours and had over 30 responses.

This couple had a lot of really good reviews from all over the world. We checked with our insurance agent and he was OK with the arrangement.
 
Sunset said:
OP - what will you do with your valuables, private information like tax returns, bank accounts, computers, guns, etc ?
Click to expand...



This is my concern about having someone stay at our home. We can lock smaller valuables in a safe deposit box, but I’d hate for someone to go rifling through our financial files. Also we have a lot of very expensive modern furniture that can easily be damaged.

With cats, I think it is better to have someone stay with them or at least come check on them often in their own regular environment. Dogs are more flexible. Our dog stays with an excellent pet sitter in his home and we like that arrangement much better.
 
Our Rottweiler goes to a kennel @ $15 a day. They're going to $19 due to price increases for dog food.

Our three cats stay in the house for as long as 2 weeks without supervision. We load them up with cat food and 4 litter boxes and they're just fine. Upon our return, they just fuss at us for 1/2 a day.
 
Bamaman said:
Our Rottweiler goes to a kennel @ $15 a day.
Our three cats stay in the house for as long as 2 weeks without supervision
Click to expand...

Bamaman.... Bring the Rotten one here... $5 a day... Missing ours.
We have no experience with outside sitters, always had family looking in, mainly my brother. At the old place we could lay a bag of food in the garage, fill a kiddie pool with water and the gang of 6 would be good for a week. Chickens were another story... My brother worked for eggs....
Makes it easier now that we bought his house(rented) and the place next door. We get ready to leave and our last remaining dog will run nextdoor to get away from getting put in the garage... with an outside pen.
 
OP here. I hadn't given much thought to protecting my valuables from a stranger, I guess. So that's a consideration. My financial records are locked in a filing cabinet, but I guess they could break into that. But so could a someone breaking into my house. My computer could be moved to a friend's house, I guess. My furnishings are nothing that can't be replaced. I'll give more thought to that aspect.

A challenge I think I will have if I post on one of the housesitting services sites is that my location isn't probably all that desireable to most people probably. I'm no Palm Springs! But maybe someone would like to be in the area.

Thanks for all the feedback. I'm leaning toward not proceeding with a total stranger and trying to leverage someone local.
 
It took a while and a LOT of searching to find a sitter that we felt comfortable with to look after our cats that could stay in our home AND that could administer insulin to one of the cats morning and night. Fortunately we found someone in our area. We had a couple of initial visits to go over a schedule and get to know her. She had other clients that required her to visit other homes during the day to feed pets or walk dogs. She would text us with how the cats were doing and promptly answered our text when we had questions. She knew which veterinary hospital we use in case of emergency and we also contacted the vets that she had our permission to take in the cats. Then we had a set of instructions we left in the kitchen for reference if needed.
It worked out great and if our travel had not been interrupted for the past couple of years we would have used her even more.
We did have to plan in advance in case she had previous commitments to stay elsewhere.


Cheers!
 
PaunchyPirate said:
Thanks. These are interesting and helpful. We have a small college in town. I was thinking of trying to find a responsible student who might be interested in a break from their roommates for spell. I’m not sure students would want to come and go (the college is about 2-3 miles away. Maybe.
Click to expand...



When I was between college and medical school, I house and cat sat for a week. I had an on-campus job for a few weeks as well, part time. It was a nice break from my parents house and I enjoyed it.

One of my medical school classmates found housing for his entire first year through house sitting. It was a Beverly Hills mansion.

If you go the college student route, it can work very well, but make sure-no parties! My son would have been overjoyed to do such a job. He hates parties and had awful roommates.
 
It would be great to be able to get someone you know. Another option would be to call your vet's office and see if they have any recommendations.
 
Check your local vets office. Several folks at ours do pet sitting, in home or daily checks.
We even have two that compete for time with our pup!
 
When we retired and downsized ten years ago we made two decisions to facilitate travel.

The first was a lock and leave home. Snow removal and lawn care was a must.

The second...no plants, no pets.

Worked out well for us. Pre covid we typically do two extended trips..usually 2-3 months at a time.
 
Last edited:
PaunchyPirate said:
A challenge I think I will have if I post on one of the housesitting services sites is that my location isn't probably all that desireable to most people probably. I'm no Palm Springs! But maybe someone would like to be in the area.
Click to expand...

We were afraid no one would want to be in Portland, OR in the cold and rainy winter but we were wrong. We had about 33 applicants within the first 12 hours of posting and selected 3 people to interview, they were all in Portland. We wanted to use someone who was local in case we had to change our departure date. If someone had flown in from overseas and we came down with covid right before leaving it could have been a problem.

The thing we liked about using trustedhousesitters is we could read reviews from people who had used the house sitters before. Also, the company does background and ID checks. Plus, a lot of the house sitters are older, many are retirees who want to travel without paying for lodging.

You can read the security checks trustedhousesitters uses here:

https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/trust-and-safety/

For our first trip we found a nursing student on the NextDoor app. That didn't go well, she was immature and didn't communicate with us. We almost returned home halfway through the trip. We decided not to go that route again.
 
DW and I have been sitters on a few occasions. Sometimes for friends. Other times for strangers. We did it when we were in-between houses and to save money when visiting a city we wanted to see.

We did get one job from a pet sitting service posting where we stayed at a person's house and took care of their dog for a few days. Our big house sitting story was being awaken in the middle of the night by the drip, drip of water landing in the cover of the bedroom ceiling light. During a very long cold Wisconsin cold spell, a pipe burst in the upstairs bathroom. The homeowner was fortunate we were able to call a plumber to stop the leak.

We also had people stay at our house. We had one minor issue with one sitter but hardly memorable. The other was fine.

Good luck.
 
our dog requires daily meds and a percortin injection every 23 days, so we are very fortunate to have a veterinarian friend here.
As Brett mentioned, we will try to go dog-free when these two are gone, at least for a few years of travel.
Sometimes vet techs will take on the more difficult pet sitting jobs. We have a friend who does that too, but it is not inexpensive by any means.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

aja8888
Show off your dog..or other pet..and how well he/she is treated (and fed)!
2 3
Replies
65
Views
2K
Venturer
Venturer
R
Travel Hack - Works for Me
2
Replies
27
Views
2K
CarbonaNotGlue
C
Rianne
Do Not Want to Rent a Car in Italy
2 3 4
Replies
92
Views
6K
Rianne
Rianne
S
Treasury Direct FYI: Changing Primary Bank Information
Replies
1
Views
565
euro
euro
T
TickTock's Take on Bonds vs. Bond Funds
Replies
6
Views
824
Chuckanut
Chuckanut

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom