Hello everyone!
The thread is open again - I really look forward to reading more of your epiphanies! This has been a great conversation.
Jenny 
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I was just marvelling this morning at our current hosts’ beautiful Japanese knife. It is so comfortable to hold and a joy to slice with!
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We’ve sometimes pondered on the reasons why Pet Parent attitude towards us, as housesitters, varies a lot. Probably a simplification but we’ve come across four mindsets of Pet Parents.
- Friendly. Some Pet Parents proactively seek in-person time. They seek to converse, share experiences and perhaps build ongoing relationship. They invite us to arrive one, or more, day before or before sit start; and stay one, or more, day after sit conclusion.
- Gratitude. Some Pet Parents are clearly thankful and atypically generous. Perhaps we’re giving them confidence of worry-free travel; property confidence; pet care; savings them significant expense; or otherwise. They say thank you a lot.
- Transactional. Some Pet Parents see housesitting as a trade. They often choose not to meet in-person; schedule plans to collect/dropoff key. Communication is on as-needed basis. Easy come, easy go - next.
- Cold. Some Pet Parents just can’t get past lucky housesitting enjoying ‘free accommodation’ in their property. Pet Parent is doing housesitter a ‘favour’. Pet care seems secondary. Housesitter expected responsibilities are often higher.
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I agree that the petsitter must be willing to adapt. I’ve read the bad reviews that appear on TH just to help inform myself of how and why things go wrong and I must say that the sitter won’t adapt just as often as the homeowner is unreasonable. And when those two types meet it’s a disaster. I choose my sits carefully because I dread the day when an owner gives me a bad review.
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@Chayot_Machmad, in case helpful then we had this view when starting out housesitting. As we accumulated reviews, our priorities evolved. We are now confident that were we to receive a bad review then there would be explanatory circumstances.
We now seek positive housesitting experiences. Using your language, we ‘dread’ being materially deceived by pet parents into execution of a housesit that we would otherwise never have progressed. On one housesit, we had cause to raise a Member Dispute against Pet Parent blatant breach of THS Terms of Service - for various reasons, we’d like to avoid repetition. We continue to perceive that vast majority of THS members are good people, with good intentions - but there are exceptions.
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Oh my goodness…mine is consistently 44lb, every time, for NO REASON I CAN FIGURE OUT! It just is.
(I feel so seen…) 
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I’ve traveled world-wide most of my career, since my early 20’s. It was the making of me, and I’ve always loved it. Now in my early-retirement, I’m delighted to have found petsitting to continue the journey.
I’ve read so many eloquent descriptions & experiences on this thread that truly resonant with me, so I have only this to add:
“I love that I get to live a new & uniquely different life, every single sit.”
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@ClaraKing, great reflection - we’d thoroughly agree. We didn’t join THS Forum - not know about it - until we’d be housesitting full-time for 18 months or so. By that time, we had come to appreciate that for many Pet Parents then their actual needs are not granular checklist tasks (e.g. walk dog x/day, take out recycling) but rather high-level responsibility (e.g. look after everyday ‘stuff’). Typically Pet Parents want to enjoy their trip. This mindset drove our Forum name ‘gotyourback’.
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After more than 26 stays across different countries, I would say my biggest insight is this:
We don’t just take care of pets or properties — we step into someone else’s version of “normal.” (I borrowed that phrase from someone here and think it describes it perfectly.) Every home has its own energy and rhythm. Some pets are independent and free-spirited, others are deeply attached to their owners, and some become surprisingly attached to me after just a few days.
…
WE FEEL TOTALLY THE SAME 
We’re petsitting for over 2 years now and we LOVE IT …
So glad we found THS.
We have a small Cavalier King Charles Fleur who travels with us everywhere and it’s soooo nice to see the interaction between our darling and petsit-animals.
Wonderful experiences, thank you THS 
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Decades before THS, I had similar experiences of stepping into others’ lives in another way:
Because I had a highly mobile career in news, I would often end up in new locations quickly, relocating every few years.
All of my new employers would pay to move me, but if I didn’t want to immediately buy a place (because I wouldn’t have enough exposure to choose new neighborhoods), I would sublet places where the owner would leave everything they owned for me to use. They’d be people going on sabbatical, teaching elsewhere for a semester, etc. I’d find them via Craigslist.
All I’d show up with were clothes, laptops and mobile devices, and I would live in their homes for months at a time. The longest I did that for in one stretch was for a year, across four sublets.
In combination over the years, many of my employers would pay for temporary housing in what are commonly called “serviced apartments” or “corporate rentals” – everything would be stocked, so all you’d need bring were clothes, laptop and mobile gear (though I started living in such places long before laptops and mobile electronics were even a thing 
).
For me, mobility, carrying only essentials and adapting to new countries/states has been familiar since my 20s, decades ago.
Plus, I grew up among military families, for whom moving frequently is common, so the concept of randomly uprooting seemed natural to me even as a kid. That – along with being a first-generation immigrant as a kid and knowing many such families through my parents – is probably why I’ve never considered any one place a permanent home.
Even back when I played with dolls, they lived in a shoebox that I pretended was an RV.
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Yes our approach is that we’re ’a safe pair of hands’ and the people that any HOs want to be dealing with a big or small crisis. The small crisis we handle ourselves without needing advice/instructions eg smoke alarm batteries dying at 4am or a tap needing a new washer. Regarding a big crisis we know how to approach most things via a team effort with the HO or designated local responsible/decision maker. But some of this is simply life/work experience coming into play.
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Something I include in my sitter profile for hosts to consider: I’ve owned homes for decades and have taken great care of them, including large properties, wells, septic systems and pools. Also have lived in many places, including overseas. I think that helped me land desirable sits even when just starting to sit, with no reviews or recommendations.
I also mention, for consideration in case hosts might be open to sharing cars, that I’ve driven safely for decades. That includes driving comfortably in congested cities and across countries while road tripping in my RV. I think that’s why some hosts end up offering me use of cars even though they weren’t included in their listings.
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We do this too 
. Specifically we note in many of our applications that we have driven for many years; on left-hand and right-hand vehicles; in manual and automatic vehicles; have no claims or accidents; and find that use of vehicle can greatly improve pet care (especially dogs).
More than 20 of our housesits have included use of Pet Parent vehicle. Many times this topic was not mentioned in listing but Pet Parent notes in video call that they hadn’t even considered it but are willing to explore possibility. Often leads to a win-win outcome. UK car insurance is driver-based and this can impact possibility or cost of temporary housesitter coverage. But rest of world, to our knowledge, has car insurance that is vehicle-based and insurance for housesitter often has zero incremental cost.
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We did a sit for the funniest looking dog, who was so odd looking she made us laugh on meeting her. She proved to be the loveliest companion and one of those we remember as being extra special.
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Eight years ago, we didn’t plan any of this. We fell into housesitting almost by accident, and somehow never fell back out.
The first epiphany came hard and early: learning not to cry every time we said goodbye. And I mean that literally. I had to learn it, consciously. Because the goodbyes don’t get smaller. You just get better at carrying them.
What shifted for me was realizing that pets aren’t something you own. They are something you hold responsibility for, temporarily or otherwise. That reframe changed everything. The dog sleeping on your feet doesn’t belong to you, and that’s not a loss. You show up fully, you love without claim, and then you release.
The other thing nobody tells you: stepping into someone else’s life for a while is a strange and beautiful privilege. Their routines, their neighborhood, their elderly cat who only trusts you by day three. You get to inhabit a life without the weight of building it. And in doing that, over and over, you start to understand what actually makes a home. Living inside so many different lives has taught me more about what drives people, their choices, their comforts, the things they quietly arrange their whole world around, than any conversation ever could.
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@Wiebke, beautifully expressed reflections 
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