Many families can find it stressful putting their beloved family member in a kennel when away on holidays. That’s where house sitting can work so well for you. It allows your animals to be cared for in their own home. Ensuring they get the love, pats and walks they are accustomed to. We asked The Travelling House Sitters about their adventures with pets…
The Travelling House Sitters are a young couple – Brittnay the Aussie and Jayden the Kiwi. Currently located in Dublin, Ireland. They have just finished their 5th house sit and have big plans to continue traveling and house sitting in the future.
In their words… Find out some of the quirkiest pets we have encountered, as well as the unfortunate occurrences that have happened to us!
Our Most Unusual Pet:
So far, our house sits have been pretty standard, with just the likes of the cutest cats and dogs, with the exception of one.
We arrived in the affluent suburb of Dalkey in South Dublin for a 1-month house sit.
We had been expecting older Labrador named Roxy. After arriving and meeting the family and the gorgeous lab, one of the kids came out with a wooden box and said “remember to tell them about Teddy”. Since arranging the house sit over Skype some months earlier, the family had agreed to look after a family friends tortoise, Teddy.
To be honest they didn’t really know much about Teddy. They knew he was a tortoise, they knew he needed food and water… but that’s about it. So with that information, the family was off to France leaving us with a tortoise and no real instructions what to do with him! Luckily we had Google at our disposal.
The Pets we didn’t get along with
When we first arrived in Ireland we did a short house sit near Enfield, a small town 50km to the west of Dublin. We looked after 2 cats, 2 dogs, and 2 chickens. The cats and dogs were all absolute angles. However, the chickens were a complete nightmare.
When we went out to feed them & collect the fresh eggs in the morning, they would chase us and try to escape out the gate. One morning Brittnay came out to find Jayden running around the pen with a bucket of chicken feed while the chickens chased him, trying to peck his feet! After that incident, every time venture into the pen after that was decided by rock paper scissors.
Have We Had Any Unfortunate Occurrences?
Fortunately, we have been very lucky so far and have not had any bad occurrences with any of our pets! However, we did have an issue with the heating in one house. Being summer here in Dublin means you still need heating at night. We looked after a big old house in South Dublin that got absolutely freezing as soon as the sun when down. It ran off a thermostat that as far as we were concerned didn’t work. We got used to it and just layered up in the house at night, a bit unusual for an Aussie in summer!
On the last week of the house sit, we got a message from the house owner with her apologies and detailed instructions on how to use the thermostat that it was ‘a bit of work’ to get going if you hadn’t used it before. The rest of the house sit was lovely and warm after that.
Are We on Permanent Holiday? Or Do We Do This Instead of Renting?
We started off house sitting while we were living in London. We started off doing them locally to gain references on the websites TrustedHouseSitters and Mindmyhouse. This would allow to have a better chance of securing long term house sits in better locations.
We are currently house sitting in Dublin while working full-time jobs. This is primarily to save on rental costs. Even after living in London we have found that Dublin is an insanely expensive city to rent in. For a double room in a share house, you are looking at around $2000 AUD per month. And this is if you are lucky enough to find a house that is willing to take couples in.
Some of the rooms are just awful, one place we went to look at was in a share house with 6 other people (who were all students) and one bathroom and a very unclean kitchen. At a ‘reasonable’ $1800 AUD per month, this was not even an option.
The past three months have been rent and bill free whilst having lived in the most affluent suburbs in Dublin. Our favourite place was right in front of a harbour about 2 blocks away from Bono and Enya’s home.
Do We Have Pets Of Our Own?
Growing up we both had cats, dogs, fish, birds and the odd stick insect. We have both always loved animals and owning pets. However, for the past 3 years, we have been traveling and moving around, so it’s very hard to have anything of our own. That’s where we really love house sitting.
For the past month, we have been looking after 2 Chihuahuas, 1 Chinese Crested and 1 Whippet. They needed walks twice and day and just loved attention 24/7. We currently have 2 cats who are really cute and love snuggling up at night which is also something we really miss.
For more information about what they do and where they have been or to enquire about having them house sit for you check out their website http://www.thetravellinghousesitters.com or check out all the cutest pictures posted on social media
This is our site www.thetravellinghousesitters.com
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheTravellingHousesitters/?rc=p
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TravelHouseSit
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What a great story and lovely enterprising young couple.