Hi, we are Cecy and Kathy, retired accountants. We have 40+ pets here on our hobby farm in Chile, but won’t be needing housesitters as we have a wonderful friend who loves to live here when we go away. We do receive volunteer travellers from WorkAway to help out with our animals, but they’ve been few and far between these past 2 years.
We have vague dreams of petsitting in Europe next year, possibly Eastern Europe, depending on the terrible Ukraine war.
MEanwhile we look forward to reading of others’ experiences on the forum.
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HI @Katita welcome to our community forum and thank you for joining us from Chile … 40+ pets, just what pets do you have, please share some pictures … I’m sure there would be many sitters in our community who would love the opportunity to care for a hobby farm in Chile …
We sincerely hope that this will be a dream come true for you and will mean peace for all the people of the Ukraine and everyone affected by this tragic war.
Welcome again.
Angela and the Team
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I’m hoping to go to Chile, Argentina & Patagonia in a couple of years. I’m not sure I could cope with 40 animals though, although it would depend what they were. The most I’ve coped with has been 45 - they were all rare sheep, and all I had to do was count them every morning (they were split up into different fields), and make sure they weren’t upside down, stuck in fences or injured. As @Angela_L requests, it would be good to hear more about what animals you have and see some pics 
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Would love to hear more about 40+ animals - types, personalities. And would love to travel more to South America. I’ve only been to Peru.
Eastern Europe is great for travels - I’ve been to Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, what is now Moldava when it was part of the USSR, Russia when it was part of the USSR, and the Ukraine before and after.
Especially recommend the Baltics - Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania!
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It’s probably a good idea to avoid Eastern Europe for a while…
Just to be clear, we’re not thinking of offering our place for petsitting, that would not be a holiday for anyone other than a possible workaholic! Current headcount is 7 rescued dogs, 1 cat (who rules), 2 geese, 30 chooks, 2 goats and 5 sheep.
Two questions, please:
- how much competition is there for housesits i.e. how many people typically apply for an offer? (what percentage of applications are successful?)
- what’s the typical period between host offer and time of sit? (how far ahead do we need to be checking for opportunities?)
These sound like accountant questions, funny that!!
We’ll be in New Zealand and Australia towards the end of this year to see family and friends. Wondering if we could carry on from there to Europe - yes, I know it’s wintertime, thinking maybe around the Mediterranean - to find some housesitting opportunities?
Hi @Katita and welcome to the community forum.
We are currently on a road trip through Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia and thoroughly loving it.
These countries were all part of the old Yugoslavia which was considered Eastern Europe but now Slovenia is part of Central Europe. Absolutely stunning scenery, lots of history and friendly hospitable people.
We absolutely love your part of the world too, visiting the countries of your continent should be on everybody’s bucket list, from North to South and East to West 
We hope you enjoy your travels 
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It’s impossible to answer your questions as it all depends!
You can apply in advance but to be honest it’s possible to apply for sits once you are in the Mediterranean, sits are plentiful there. We completed a sit in France and then applied for another in Italy as we were travelling along and unfortunately had to turn down some other requests whilst we were there. We have found the Balkans does not have that many sits currently and have been spreading the word and explaining THS as we go along, so hoping we have encouraged some new members from this part of the world!
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Thank you for your reassuring replies Samox24. This is looking really promising!! Which of my continents are you referring to … Oceania or South America? (I’m Kiwi/Australian, now living 15 years in Chile.) Regardless, I agree, both well worth visits. It’s a big wide wonderful world we live in, so much to see and do!
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Referring to South America, we particularly love Brazil, Argentina and Peru, there are way too many fab countries in this continent to explore!!
Having said that we cannot wait to explore Oceania, we are hoping to do a long road trip in Australia, starting with Queensland & central Australia and hoping to visit Fiji and Samoa at some point too.
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