Hello all at THS. Colin and I took early retirement in April this year and decided that although we were lucky enough to stop work we still wanted to stay active so plan to do as much travelling and pet care as possible to keep us out and about and help burn off all that home baking we now have time for! Our only child fled the nest this year to start university and left us ‘her’ dog Bella to take care of… how is it the children plead for the pets and promise to take care of them but really it falls to the grown ups to do. 
She is an adorable 10 year old bichon/maltese cross and to be honest is a bit of a mummy’s girl! We have spent most of this year sorting out a static holiday home, moving the daughter to Glasgow and fitting in the odd house sit as well (on another site). So now we are a bit more settled and looking for more sits we decided to join THS as well. We are dual citizenship UK/Kiwi and hope eventually to split our time between the UK and NZ but in the meantime hope that covid settles down and next year we can at least make it to parts of Europe. Look forward to being part of the THS family.
Hi Shannon and welcome to our community forum … children leaving home but not, it’s a very familiar story although getting an adorable dog as exchange sounds like a good “deal” … at least she is still with Mummy.
Thank you for a wonderful introduction into your lives in Stratford and beyond and we hope to be able to share in your new THS adventure and live vicariously through your NZ journey.
Enjoy connecting with our members from around the world.
Angela and the Team
Welcome to TH, Shannon & Colin! LOL about your home baking comment. Congrats on your retirement and here’s wishing you many exciting sits to come!
Hi Shannon, welcome from Leila & Paul here in Redmond WA in the Pacific Northwest de USA. across from the “big pond”! We just joined recently and we are enjoying reading about the very interesting people who are part of this community around the globe. We adopted dogs because of my daughter’s pleading and I am still grateful that she pleaded and insisted! We then adopted a bichon/maltese Charlie and a bichon/mini poodle called Henry both from high kill shelters. They lived to ages 18 and 16 and were amazing to have around. This year we adopted 2 rescues again - this time from Mexico: Pepe Bonbon (medium poodle) and Muneca (who is a bichon/maltese/terrier). Hard to be without dogs around! ALl thank you to our pleading daughter! Hope you find the perfect sitting situations! Cheers, Leila and Paul