Trusted House Sitters - Phone App

We’ve been travelling for a long time now, over 6 years, and much longer than we had planned when we left Australia. Probably the most pertinent factor in enabling this length of time is funding. Originally and for a long time it was purely on our savings from working in Australia. Most recently however, we have had to become more resourceful in funding our adventures in order to finish the trip.

We are a very energetic and adaptable couple and we’ll give anything a go if we know about it. It turns out word-of-mouth or personal communication are just as effective in this era of high tech devices and intelligent algorithms as they ever have been because we seem to find out all the gems this way. We only discovered Trusted House Sitters

We obviously signed up to be sitters so can only really comment on this side of the program (the other feature to the program is the owner/host who wants/needs to go away). It was straightforward to complete our profile, adding photos and references. Our philosophies:

• Be honest, most hosts will be reasonable and prefer to know what level you are at so they can determine how much information or instructions they need to provide.
• Respect their wishes, again most hosts will have their own routines with pets and gardens etc. but be flexible for you to map out your day how it suits you.
• Commit, you can leave a host and most importantly the pets in a very difficult situation if you don’t turn up or decide to leave early.

We travel with our dogs and so far the only reason we are turned down for sits is when the owners believe their pets would not welcome our girls. We have completed 2 sits now (Portugal and Italy) and missed one due to Covid in the UK. We’ve looked after dogs, cats, chickens and donkeys and for us it's so nice to have Weeti and Shadow socialising on a much more personal level for a few weeks with lots of different animals.

Opportunities available to you if you join the Trusted House Sitters

• Try a different sort of holiday, stay somewhere totally different to your normal; if you’re a city slicker then pick a place in the country, if you live in the country try a place in the city.
• Learn how other people live, learn from their lives.
• Learn new skills for gardening, home maintenance, living off the land, caring for many many different types of animals.
• Reduce the cost of accommodation expenses on a long trip.
• Take a break from travel now and then in a home with pets and/or a garden.
• Get a solid dose of pet loving looking after someone else's if you can’t have any yourself.
• Build a profile of reviews for future applications.

We have the app on our phone and check it fairly regularly using the filters available (dates, duration, animals, location, home type, wifi) for the sort of sits that would suit us. We typically look for sits that are 2+ weeks in any location. We don’t apply any filters to the types of animals we would look after because we love them all and value the experience we get with every encounter. Some properties can be remote and hosts will quite reasonably request couples or friends rather than a solo person and that they have a vehicle because it can be very isolating with no public transport nearby. Of course the city or beach locations would be completely different to this. The isolate sits are great for us because we tick the boxes and have lots of land away of any busy roads for the dogs to run free for a while.

When we aren’t doing the daily chores we use the time to work on the motorbikes, fix and mend gear, shop, do accounts, work on Pillion Pooch, get some exercise walking or running and catch up on Netflix! All things we need to do and would otherwise be doing in a campsite or Airbnb with the pressure of always moving on due the daily costs.

We really like Trusted House Sitters and only wish we’d know about it back in 2014. It's one of the few programs we have found where it really is a mutually beneficial arrangement. When we leave we are very sad to say goodbye to the animals.

If you would like to give it a go as a host or a sitter (or both) you can find out more information or sign up here Trusted House Sitters.