We are a family of 4 (Mum (English), Dad (Danish) and 2 boys 7 & 9 years old) living in Denmark and as much as we love pets we also love the freedom to travel and explore. So, instead of getting our own fur babies, we decided to mix travel and pets together and joined THS in the hope of fulfilling our dreams.
We love all animals but have no experience of looking after reptiles so we tend not to look for sits, just because we don’t want to make any mistakes. HO’s leave their homes and pets in our trust and care and we want to be sure we know how to carry out those tasks correctly and be confident that the HO’s can rest knowing we will love and cherish our time with their pets and take good care of their homes.
Our youngest son is allergic to cats, so when we are sitting as a family we avoid sits with cats. It is sad because we all love cats and our son would love to snuggle with them but he simply can’t, not even outdoors.
If the sit is in Denmark or Sweden, mum (Natasha) can go alone to those sits and she is the most experienced of the family with a variety of animals and no allergies.
Being new to this platform we are very excited to get started and Natasha has a sit coming up in Sweden with 10 cats, which she is extremely excited about.
We look regularly on the forum as well as the search to see if there are any HO’s that suit our profile who need help caring for their pets. We hate to see people feeling like they are stuck finding a sitter so we do all we can to help those people out. We are mostly looking for sits in Europe right now, however, once the borders open up we will be searching a much broader scope of countries.
We are so happy to be part of this community and hope to be visiting some of you in the future.
Hi! It’s so nice to see another family traveling together and managing to find sits that can accomodate. I travel with my retired father and my sister. Do you have any advice for finding sits that can accommodate or how you apply to improve your chances of being selected? We have not had much luck recently, so I wonder if it is because of how I apply.
Hi @batyal and welcome to the forum. We are another housesitting family from the UK. I sit with my sons aged almost 11 and almost 13, and often with my husband too (I work in a school and the boys are at school so we have more available holiday time than my husband).
So far we’ve only done sits in the UK and there seem to be plenty of sits here. We find that most of our sits, but not all, are for families like ourselves. The pets are used to a busy lively household, and are used to having children around. Sometimes it is as simple as the homeowner thinking that our family sounds like their family, or we have similar interests.
We have also done quite a few sits with multiple pets - there are enough of us to manage walking 3 or 4 dogs.
Our application introduces us all and says a little about what we do and our hobbies. We are a very outdoorsy family and we almost always apply for sits including dogs, so this probably helps show we’d be keen to walk them. We’ll always mention the pets by name and we often refer to some little detail in the listing or the photos that stood out, or that we particularly liked - a photo of dogs playing / in a stream / a dog and cat who clearly get on / an unusual sleeping position.
Your photos are important too, so ideally have photos of each of the family members with animals. Most of my photos are of my sons, and I need to update them every so often as they grow up.
We are lucky to be based somewhere there are plenty of sits. Where are you based Batya?
We started our first sits by taking advice from this forum and picking up a few local ones first to get some feedback on our profile and also some local hugs that often turn out to be return sits.
We often find too, like Debbi mentioned, that the sits we take abroad are happy to take on a family if they too are a family. Not only are their homes big enough to accommodate us but it also a nice thing for the pets, to feel like they have a replacement family around.
We try to always make the application feel very personal and that we care about all the requirements the HO’s have stated in the ad. We will talk about how the home is also important to us that we have a high level of hygiene and always make sure the house is secure before we leave. Being outspoken about respecting the HO’s property and any boundaries like rooms they prefer to keep off-limits etc is quite important to build trust.
I’m sure you will find a good sit soon. Keep trying and make sure you have some good family pictures on your profile.
Hi @batyal and family welcome to our community forum we are so glad to have you join …
Congratulations on completing your first sit, that’s really great. I did look for your profile but unfortunately could not find it with your forum registered email, perhaps Direct Message me your TrustedHousestters ID as I would love to get to know you and your family through your profile, in the same way that owners will.
Application messages and profiles are what owners use in their selection process and a good profile starts with good quality, relevant photos after all a “Picture Says A Thousand Words”
Well crafted profiles that include an introduction to all of you, personalised application messages and being flexible also applying for local sits, particularly last minute ones which are suitable for your family size and accompanying pet family members.
You have some great feedback already and I’m sure other members will join in the conversation with their support and feedback. There are many helpful conversations on the forum, you can use the search function (spyglass) too locate those of interest and perhaps let other family members look around at the helpful conversations.
Welcome again and enjoy connecting with our members from around the world.
Thank you so much for taking the time to craft such a thorough response. My family is the same way in a sense where either my sister or dad won’t be available at one point, so it’s nice to hear that there are other people who have such a fluid family and travel plans as well. I am based now in Alexandria, VA. There are actually loads of opportunities here, so I applied to get a few local sits hopefully to raise the profile a bit.
Thank you again for your kind words and safe travels!
Batya