We are considering upgrading to become a Pet Sitter. We are already a Home Owner her and love it. Our concern is finding both a sit and a sitter for the same time period. Do you have any insights or suggestions please? We really appreciate any comments you might have.
@hello, welcome back to THS Forum.
As experienced housesitters, we’ve met several pet parents that also housesit. And quite a few more than express interest, even enthusiasm, about housesitting in the future.
Hardly a large sample size but most of those conversations highlighted challenges of concurrent roles. Most ‘Combined’ that we have met chose not to concurrently be pet parents and housesitters - on the basis of logistics, complexity and risk. Rather they chose to be either pet parents or housesitters, and to use family/friends or paid services. i.e. when they are housesitting themselves then they use family/friends/contractor to look after their own pet(s).
We are both homeowners and Sitters. Homeowners for the first 1.5 years and about six successful five star sits in both directions.
Then we turned Sitter as well. We’ve done two sits, the first was us getting a sitter at the same time of going off for a sit. It worked out very well, and both sides were driving, meaning the Sitters we chose were driving to our home, and then we were driving to the house we were chosen for. This did take some coordinating and trust in the process that you have chosen a good Sitter, and that the house that you have agreed to do has a solid history of being a good homeowner on THS by way of having good reviews.
The second sit, we already had a Sitter going on in our home where our cat stays behind, while we traveled away to a second home we have. My husband went and did that sit himself and it went well.
My advice is to start local-ish (driving distance) and relatively short (5-7 days) and give yourself two extra days minimum for the sit you are applying for that allows You an overlap at your own home towelcome incoming sitter and handover your home, and some wiggle room to arrive to the house sit you are doing without issue. We ended up asking our Sitters to come a day early and stay a day later because we didn’t think it all out correctly upfront. Thankfully, they were very gracious and super flexible and were amazing.
We are both sitters (60 reviews) and home owners (21 reviews), and it was not always easy to match both trips (our dog has since passed away). Before we became home owners here, our dog stayed in a lovely boarding place. Since we live in a great neighbourhood and yet have no palm trees, pool, or ocean walks to attract people, sometimes we would not get a sitter. However the times we did made it worthwhile to be on both sides.
One thing to consider - since applications in our area often don’t get filled (US Midwest), a few times we took the one person that applied, even though they would not have been our choice had more sitters been available. Both times that was a mistake, and we had to learn to trust our judgement. Hope that helps.