hi just a pet peeve. i don’t know if my understanding is wrong and if so, i’m probably on the wrong site.
the pet owner goes away with 24 hour freedom to do whatever they like whenever they like. then they want someone to come into their home, and not leave for more than two hours a day! in other words, have no life. i see over and over these sits of how the owner is pulling all the punches. it’s certainly not 50/50. i’ve done a fair few now over three years and not just my own but i sit with my daughter so it doesn’t get included in my sits. help me understand, because to me it’s so one sided. it always costs the sitter to get to the sit and double if they want you seen before the intended sit. i always spend more on groceries as i don’t have my own pantry, i always leave the house spotless and at times have had to clean before i can put my own food in the fridge! my children think i’m crazy because of how much work it becomes, and i’ll be honest as you can tell i’m becoming weary of ppl. i’m sorry. 2 hours out all day. gosh i’d feel like i’m away at the kennels
Sounds like you need to choose different sits? If you want more time than 2 hours a day away from the dog (which, I agree, is very limiting) then don’t do a sit where that’s the requirement. I’ve been sitting for over 10 years and I’ve never had a sit with that limitation. You’re not required to take any sit that doesn’t fit YOUR needs as well.
@bubble don’t be tempted to apply for ( or confirm) a sit that don’t suit you .
THS is a matching service if we as sitters choose a sit that doesn’t suit us , we may feel resentful about the responsibilities involved. However it’s not the hosts fault if the listing clearly stated the expectations.
What doesn’t suit you , may be perfect for someone else and if it’s completely undesirable then the hosts won’t get any applications.
We like to have several hours a day of free time so we don’t apply for sits which don’t offer that . There are however plenty of sitters who love being 24/7 with the pets
Our experience has been 20 lovely sits with THS in 2 years . All of these gave us freedom to go out without the pets for 4 or more hours a day . Some were for cats , birds, rabbits, hens , others were dogs used to their owners being out at work . That being said, we often spent the whole day at home with the pets ( beautiful homes and surroundings ) or took the dogs out with us on trips , but we also had freedom to go out without the pets whenever we wanted to .
Not every country has the same amount of sits , so it maybe that the country where you are looking to sit does not have many opportunities, or is highly sought after.
If we apply for a sit and later find out from our video call or from the welcome guide that the expectations are too demanding we withdraw our application( even if the home or location look great ) If we confirm a sit that doesn’t suit us, we only have ourselves to blame . I say this from my own experience.
Because some people have no problem with it. Don’t they deserve a chance to choose what they want? And there is a mutual benefit - as long as you choose a sit that also fits your personal needs.
2hrs??? I haven’t seen many like that. Out of 30+ sits we’ve only had one where we couldn’t leave the dog, which was totally fine with us, lovely dog. I think there’s loads of choice for every sitter. Just be picky and choose the sits that suit you perfectly. But it sounds like you need to be sitting cats, rather than dogs, then you’ll have much more freedom.
@bubble I do empathise with your feelings about it not always feeling like a 50/50 beneficial situation. We’ve never had a sit scenario where we can only have 2 hours away from the pets (though, to be fair, we don’t usually leave them for long and especially not on dog sits), but with other situations.
I am sorry you encounter this kind of sits. Out of the 20+ sits we did, we just had one sit in which we had a situation you mentioned above (the dirty house at the start of the sit).
So I think you just had bad luck.
Here are solutions we use to make it an (more) equal trade. Hope it helps you to get a more equal sit:
We don’t apply for sits were animals can’t be left alone for X hours. (There are a lot of it)
We don’t apply for sits with expensive travel costs or when we don’t use it as a kind of (little) holiday (which also costs money)
(that said, we also can work from home, so a housesit for us doesn’t have to be specifically a holiday…it is just working from home in a different environment)
We don’t apply for sits were they want to see you before the intended sit. We always do a video call. (We never had a HO who expected this)
We can take stuff from our own pantry with us. And we don’t: our stuff in the pantry will stay the same amount, so we don’t have to buy new stuff at that moment. For the money we save at not having to fill up our pantry, we buy new groceries at our sitadres. (In the end we then have approximately the same costs)
If we live in the HO house, our house will not get dirty. So we have to clean the homeowners house once a week, instead of cleaning our own house. But still we just have to clean one house.
If we have to clean the fridge (or the home) at the beginning of the sit, because it is to dirty for our standards, at the end of the sit it is always still is cleaner then before. So I don’t have to deepclean it anymore at the end of the sit. So I replace the deep cleaning from the end, to the begin of the sit.
At the video-call we most of the time get a little video tour through the house. So we get an idea of the environment and cleanliness.
(Most of the time we don’t even really ask for it, but it comes spontaneously when chatting with eachother).
When I first started on THS just over 2 years ago I had a chat with a local HO with one cat that during our video chat expressed the sitter not leave their property for the whole 5 day sit. I sent a message saying I didn’t feel the sit was a good fit and withdrew my application. Some sitters may have accepted not leaving the HO’s property.
I telecommute from all sits, so spend a lot of time with pets automatically. But even then, I avoid all sits that say a sitter can’t leave the home or leave only for short windows, like two hours. That’s because I figure those pets and/or hosts are too much work / not reasonable. I appreciate the heads up if that’s mentioned in their listing, so I can easily skip them.
Some other sitters might find such sits appealing. Like some sitters say they’re in it just for the pets, so maybe they don’t care if they never leave the home. Nowadays, you can get food and lots else delivered, so it’s easy to be a hermit. And maybe some of those folks don’t have homes or have homes that aren’t as nice as their sit homes or have roommates or others they want to get away from.
We try not to close topics unless strictly necessary, just in case the conversation might be useful for someone who has experienced the same issue in the future, but we’ve had a lot of lovely meaningful advice in this discussion which people can still read even though I’m going to close the discussion on this occasion.
