Hello!
If you opened my journal, you're probably curious about pet sitting while traveling.
You've come to the right place!
My husband and I retired 7 years ago while we were still in our 50's. We just bought a home in Weaverville NC (just next to Asheville). We were completing renovations on our home when John came home from running errands and asked “What do you think about moving out of the country?” And that’s how it started.
I was taken a little off guard. We were now retired and had the time but, move out of the country? Well, we compromised and decided to rent our home out for a year and go “live” in another country. Mind you, we had never done anything like this before. Up until this time, we had just been the normal American couple, we worked our 9-5 jobs and went on a 2-3 week vacation every year.
In searching on how to become temporary expats, I stumbled on pet sitting. It was perfect! We could travel to several countries and see more of the world while enjoying the company of pets, kinda like an Airbnb with pets. I researched the legitimacy of pet sitting sites. When I was satisfied that these sites weren’t a scam, I signed us up. We had two areas in mind that we wanted to see. Central/South America and Europe. I searched the sites for interesting pet sits in both parts of the world and started sending out applications. We decided whoever came back first, that would be where we went.
We received our first invite to a pet sit within a month. A wonderful woman in Edinburgh Scotland took a chance on us and invited us to stay with Phillip the Cat for 4 weeks! We were on our way to Europe! Exciting yes but also a bit daunting. The idea of pet sitting wasn’t the issue, even though we had no prior experience with pet sitting other than taking care of our friend’s pets and fostering for our local pet shelter. We now knew there was no turning back. We accepted a sit and our responsibility was to arrive and complete the pet sit. Our job now was to book flights and start to line up other pet sits in Europe. As first time pet sitters and only once visiting relatives in the UK, we had a lot to learn about moving around Europe and the ins and outs of pet sitting. It was definitely a crash course on the job training opportunity!
We completed 13 pet sits throughout Europe that year. We actually only did pet sitting the first 6 months, by choice. The remainder of the time we spent mostly in Eastern Europe. We “lived” in Romania for 3 months. We stayed in Budapest for a month. We then went to Prague, Poland and London before we ended our trip and flew back home.
And that’s how we became traveling pet sitters.
Since then, we have completed over 50 pet sits! Our last 4 trips have been in the States. We have driven all over the South, Southwest and all the western States. We travel 3-6 months a year. We have been invited back multiple times for pet sits and we have made many new friends along the way. We have traveled to so many amazing places and have stayed with wonderful pets.
We have a website StaySitTrips.com which is all about our pet sitting and our adventures. I recently started a blog where I'll chronicle our adventures, talk to how we do what we do and also share many money saving tips.
Needless to say, retirement has been so rewarding for us!