I’ve written to support multiple times and they tell me I can block off time on my calendar when I’m not available but it never works.
I sometimes travel myself or book a sit for friends or family that are not with TH so would like to mark my calendar as unavailable on the TH site but it doesn’t allow me to. Anyone else have this issue?
I brought up the topic of the calendar on here a long time ago. It’s so NOT USER FRIENDLY. I think a lot of us sitters have just totally given up on using it and THS is well aware of this.
Thanks. I have so many people that reach out to me and hate that I have to turn them down after their request. Seems like an easy enough fix from a programming side. Frustrating but thanks for the feedback!
@dianae support is giving you an incorrect answer. Hence the reason you’re having trouble. The calendar is defaulted to unavailable (white). You add available blocks of dates (green) and TrustedHousesitters sits (once confirmed) are a black line across the dates. Unfortunately with no explanation with the calendar, most people misinterpret it. It really can be a waste of time.
Thank you for that. I work in technology and can figure things out but have been hitting my head against a wall every time I try their instructions.
Why not just a calendar where we can block out when we’re NOT available? SO much simpler! (I’m with two other sitting sites that do this. It works perfectly.)
@fledermaus Ironically, as I go to reply to your question, a pop-up window shows ‘This topic has been solved’. If only that were the case. 
I’ve been on the forum almost four years. This issue has been raised repeatedly, including in the early days when TrustedHousesitters staff did monitor the posts.
As to your question … ‘Why not?’ - many would like to know the answer. 
Perhaps @Mark_B can provide an explanation, or at least pass along your request to staff members to provide a response, or suggest that it be added to the to-do list.
I did receive a response from TH and they finally tested the issue finding we were all correct. They told me they will forward the issue and work on it.
I’ve told them repeatedly it didn’t work as I am sure many folks have. Here is the actual response I received as of April 2025:
Thank you for your patience and apologies for the delay while I tried my best to get this done. You were correct I reached out to management to assist with getting the dates added to the callendar and we were not able to get this done. I will send a suggestion to the team to make it possible to block dates that you will be unavailable to on site expecially for those who are doing sits outside of our platform. Hopefully this can be updated in the near future.
Since you can’t mark it on your calendar, have you tried putting it in your profile. Maybe: I’m open to invitations, but not available these dates in addition to the dates showing not available on my calendar.
Well yes, that’s an option. But what a fiddly and time-consuming (both for HOs - and for me, in having constantly to edit my profile to update my availability) way to go about something that could be so simple!
Well explained and thanks. It’s only taken me 12 years to get my mind around that due to as you say ‘no explanation’.
This doesn’t work if you have a combined profile.
We are home owners and sitters, and if I try to go into add available sitter dates, it automatically defaults to creating a listing on my owner profile 
I came hoping to see if there was a fix for this issue, but it seems not.
I had to give the helpdesk dates and make them test the process as they thought it worked. I’d suggest sending them your issue and perhaps request they test it.
It’s taken me over a year (and from the forum I’m not alone) to get someone to look at my issue seriously and the agent suggested he do a test. Discovered it was an issue and aware all correct it doesn’t work as they thought it did.
Yours sounds like an additional issue.
Thanks for sharing this.
Diana
THIS, please.
I’m retired and can/will travel for the right sit: a favorited listing, a repeat sit, or to help ‘locals’ out with a last minute or cancelled sit. It’s such a pain listing blocks of “available” dates when I’m generally pretty flexible. SO much easier to mark off dates when I have commitments that can’t be changed, so that a sit wouldn’t be possible.
From the HO’s side, if I (the sitter) have dates I haven’t specifically listed as available, the HO might assume I’m not, even though I could potentially have made it work.
Thanks for this suggestion!