Hi
I’m new to this, can anyone tell me is there a maximum amount of time that people will come to sit?we go from Spain to Uk for 3 months at a time is this too long?If so can we split it between more than one sitter. Many thanks Dinah73
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Welcome @Dinah73 lots of full-time sitters prefer long sits . There’s no maximum ( except of course there may be visa requirements if sitter is coming from another country to sit )
Many sitters prefer not to split sits-
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The longest sit I’ve seen and still hasn’t ended is 4 years.
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WOT!! More infor please! 
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I am not allowed to share the listing here, but maybe THS will do a blog post about it. All I can say is that the listing is a mansion in France, the sitters are a couple and they had a baby during their 4 year sit.
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@Dinah73 Welcome! As @Silversitters
said, many of us prefer long sits. We recently booked a 3 month sit next Jan-Mar. Splitting the sit only opens up problems for everyone so it would be best to have one person. If that isn’t possible, I would personally recommend a quick trip to handle the hand off yourself. The other issue would be the length of time a person could stay. Being from the US, we are limited to the 90 day Schengen rules. I’m sure you’ll find someone great for your sit!
Dan and Nan
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I am not sure if you mean that the sitter will
end up finding that 3 months in one spot is too long or if you believe it won’t be very easy to find HO’s travelling for that duration of time…
Long sits are always really popular, just remember that most UK citizens are now restricted to 90 days ( which is slightly less than 3 months) so if you can time your holidays to 90 days maximun, including arrival and departure dates, then you will increase your pool of potential sitters massively.
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@BunnyCat i think I know that sit in France. The couple writes about having a baby during their extended time there. They were planning to move on and I saw the listing for new long termers. We applied but when we went into the details with the hosts it was simply too much work & expectation from the hosts. No flexibility with visitors even though it was several months. We think they are just looking for free caretakers. We withdrew our application.
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@Dinah73 Longer stays are very appealing to us. We’re in the UK but our son lives in Spain, so we spend long periods in both places, so the longer the sit, the better it is for us, as it saves moving around so much so we can embrace a place and totally relax.
We’ve got a 9 week sit coming up over the summer in the UK.
But also longer stays in Spain are appealing to us because it gives us a chance to spend more time with our son and his family without feeling like we are taking over their space, and I’m sure there’s plenty of sitters in a similar situation with family in the UK. I’m sure he’d freak out if I asked to stay for 90 days each time 
. But there will be sitters with the exact same scenario for the UK, as well as those who want to nestle and relax for a longer period.
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Do you find that you do a lot more in depth research and several video calls with the HO before agreeing to a long sit due to the higher risk if it’s not a fit?
This is great news now I can go ahead and adopt a lovely Spanish rescue dog🥰 thank you so much
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We treat all sits the same whether a weekend or two months.
One video call and we make our decision and expect the home host also to do the same.
Making multiple video calls is not practically possible, whilst you are dithering, another sitter will get the job.
For sits booked a long time ahead, we do send a quick message every now and then, just to give the home host peace of mind that we haven’t forgotten them.
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For us, we’ve only ever done 1 video call with any one owner, but we’ve always been quite familiar with the general areas where we sit anyway (Spain or UK), so that’s one less thing to think about for us, but also if we happen to be sitting close by when we apply for a longer one (3 weeks or more) we try to pop in, but only if we’re in the area and only if we have time, because our calendar is busy.
With the 9 week sit we’ve got coming up, we actually popped in to see them LAST June, so that one was all sorted a very long time ago. They didn’t ask, they’d been on THS for many years so knew whats-what, but we offered because we were sitting not too far away from them at the time we applied. 
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Do it 
, we’ve got two sits lined up in future with the same gorgeous dogs in both Spain and the UK, because they often travel with their dogs (Spanish rescue’s), but sometimes need a sitter wherever they are. So that’s another option for you.
Where in Spain do you head to? My son’s in Alicante, we’re off to see him in a few weeks… and also sit while we are out there too. 
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Never thought of it before I’m in uk sitting in Greece for 67 days so I can’t go abroad for more than 23 days now for a year.
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@Genevere It’s 90 days out of 180 . Then you can go back . It only applies to countries in the Schengen area so you can still look for sits in non- Schengen countries.
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@Genevere its 90 days in 180 not 90 days each year! So you only have to wait till 180 days have passed…
Thank you wasn’t sure about this at all.
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And you can head to lots of slightly more obscure places to sit in the interim @Genevere like Montenegro, Morocco, Egypt, North Cyprus, Albania, Turkey (of course ) on cheap flights from the UK! 
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