Hello @EssRogers and welcome to the forum. You can add your listing to your forum username. I’ll add the instructions below:
If you’d rather not do that for some reason, please post your listing information - city/country (as shown in your listing) and date range.
If you have a standard or premium membership, you can boost your listing once, which will move you to the front pages again.
I have read with interest the fact that there are many sits going unfilled and the reasons put forth regarding this.
I have had two replies to my sit offer but both offers have been from people who I felt were not quite a good fit. One due to her lack of experience and her youth and the other to her allusion to me offering a safe comfortable place for her to land- I may be unfair here to her but I believe we all have a sixth sense when we read a profile, and my instinct began to wobble and that is a no-go for me.
Can anyone else weigh in on their internal discomfort and how they express that and or deal with it. I don’t want to be unfair but by the same token I do NOT want to discount our inherent sixth sense about this issue. Ess Rogers
Great question @EssRogers
Trust that feeling! It triggers you for a reason. You don’t have to know why other than that discomfort will likely intensify if you ignore it.
You can certainly pause, step back and reassess but your instincts are usually best at avoiding uncomfortable situations
Hi @Alys -Sorry that you are struggling to find a sitter. I just looked at your listing and there are three things I noticed which may be putting sitters off.
1 - I can understand your anxiety at leaving your pets whilst you are away but could you cope with one update a day? By saying ‘At least’ one a day to me as a sitter makes me worry that you could be too demanding ( although I am sure that is not the case! ) If I was you I would delete the ‘At least’
2 - You say both cats have IBS - I would expand on that - I am reading a lot of ‘accidents’ to clean up
3 - To us as a couple, the pic of the single bed is not very inviting - is that the only bed available for sitters? Does it expand into a double? If so, I would make it up as a double and take a new pic.
Hope that helps x
The link in your profile just goes to my own dashboard. I recommend linking your listing so people can find it.
As for the wording - some sitters may not have English as a first language, or may have cultural differences in communication styles. However, definitely trust your gut if it is screaming at you!
HI @EssRogers I have updated the link in your Forum profile it now contains the link to your listing so that others can view.
Hi, thanks for your advice, but we have been on THS since 2015 and we never had issues with this listing (the wording is pretty much always the same) and it’s he first time we’re struggling to find someone.
I’ll definitely add a photo of our main king bed, which is what we offer to sitters (even single ones), so our bad for forgetting to upload a photo, our main bedroom is very beautiful and full of character.
As for “at least 1 update”, I don’t think you are understanding it right. At least means “At the least; at a minimum or lower limit”, meaning “no less than 1 update a day” = we don’t want to be updated once every two or three days as some sitters would like to do.
At least 1 update means this, not that I expect thousands of updates daily, in fact we usually get 1 or 2 updates a day and we’re happy with that. However, if it’s common to misunderstand the meaning of “at least” and think that it means that we want several updates a day I will change it into something else. 
As for the IBS, the cats are on a special diet and one of them is completely fine. The other often has episodes of soft poo, but she ALWAYS does her thing in the litter, there are no accidents to clean up.
Hi @Alys I joined THS as a sitter the year before you, and also see how so much has changed over the years, but especially over the past two years. We are all - sitters and homeowners - having to continually adapt and adjust these days.
As for the ‘at least’ point, I can relate to @Colin’s response. How about something like ‘We love it when we receive daily updates from the sitters.’?
Perhaps consider having your listing promoted on social media. You would need to direct message @Angela_L and she would take care of it when she’s next online. Here are some details of how that works:
@EssRogers - Absolutely trust your gut, it’s your internal self trying to tell you something. For me, I’ve read some sitters profiles where the reviews are good but when I read the application I didn’t get the feeling they were what I was looking for. Can’t explain exactly why but it just didn’t feel right. Flip of that is I had an application from a sitter recently that didn’t have any reviews yet but the application message was fabulous and I knew the person would be perfect. Gut instinct!
Thank you so much. 
Please check your DM messages … Thank you
I’ve been on this site for a month and have two trips nearing. I have not received any applications, and I’ve reached out to over 30 local sitters, all have either declined or never responded. What’s your secret to securing a sitter? I’m starting to lose hope.
@AntoniaScott I knew exactly which was your sit when I read your message. I have it saved to my favourites my family and I would love to sit for you and your adorable dogs and cats some time. Your photo of your son with the cat lying on him could almost be one of my boys, they look quite similar! However we are travelling up to Scotland for a sit on 15th April, so we sadly aren’t available for the whole of your dates.
You have a great looking listing in a very desirable location. I can only think that there are more UK sitters looking to travel abroad than usual at the moment. I really hope you get a lovely sitter to care for your cute gang.
Hi @kristen and welcome to the forum.
It’s a good idea to add a link to your listing in your forum username, so that forum members can access your listing. I’ll add the instructions next.
Adding listing to your forum username
If for some reason you’d rather not do that, perhaps add the listing information to this post, so that forum members can easily find it. Provide your location (city/country) as shown on the listing, and the date range.
If you have a standard or premium membership, you can boost your listing once, which will show it again with the new listings.
Having same issues- 3 applications, one dropped off radar, 2 had other offers whilst corresponding, so after a boost I am trying sitter invitations - Are the sitters ‘dates available’ highlighted (there is a pale green dot on the calander saying available dates) or just crossed out when not. Plus the filter location - is that where they live or where they want to sit? Looks like their home which is not as useful.
Also can we have some real feedback on these trends from THS rather than- ‘there are lots of lovely sitters waiting’- I have been doing this a long time without issues pre-covid!. I am away jubilee weekend which may not help but dorset is lovely in June.
Unfortunately, the availability calendar is so user-unfriendly that many sitters don’t update it.
I hope you find someone
We have used TH with great success in the past and now find that we get very few people contacting us…We have a comfortable home, near great parks and the beach and two fairly laid back border collies…Kiwi’s like us so they’re pretty chilled.
We hope someone will come forward soon and totally agree with the availability calendar, when we contact people they say they are not available, which is NOT reflected on their profile .
Hi @fijabee and welcome to the forum. The dates with a black line across means that the sitter is booked for a THS sit. Once a sit is confirmed, that’s automatically marked by THS, not by the sitter or homeowner. The rest of the calendar is not used consistently. If you see sitters who have green marked, then you know they have marked their availability. The calendar automatically defaults to white, so those that are all white throughout may just be that the sitters doesn’t keep their calendar current.
Welcome, Kiwis!
Sorry to say, I’m on of those folks that also can’t work with the current calendar availability setup.
The way I see it: if I don’t mark myself as available, I’ll never get an invite, and that’s logical.
But, since the calendar isn’t integrated with any 3rd party calendar, and stands alone, I have to go the illogical route: I just mark myself as “YES: available” from today until the end of time 1, so that if someone wants to send an invite, I’ll show up, and then I can decide if I am able to fit that into my schedule or not.
Everyone has their own criteria for accepting an offer, based on their own needs/expenses/availability.
For me, I will accept any 2 offer if it is local and I’m not otherwise booked!
Beyond that, it gets so complicated, I made my own spreadsheet so I can quickly determine if it’s ‘worth it’. For example, if it’s less than 4 days on a sit, then it has to be less than 2 hours drive to get there. So, I’ll drive to Chattanooga for 5 days but not to Knoxville. That would have to be 8+ days. Math!
1 Or two years from now whichever comes first 
2 With stipulations, like, I’m not sleeping in a damp dungeon (again), and each creature must have between 0 and 4 legs.
* I hope y’all are lighthearted enough to be entertained! 
Does anyone else have messages that go unanswered? I’ve reached out to nearly 40 local sitters. Some have responded to let me know they are not willing or able to sit for me. A larger portion of those messages are left “unread”. A small few are “read” but with no response. Does anyone else have that same experience? I love the concept of this website, but I’m having the most difficult time securing a sitter.
