Welcome To Our Pet Sitting Adventures With Sheepums!

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When we decided to sell our home of eighteen years in Massachusetts, we knew we weren’t sure what we wanted to do next. We had sold our house in three days, with a thirty day close, which didn’t give us long to figure out our next move! We had no idea it would lead to a grand pet sitting adventure in the UK!

We thought we might buy a small home in MA … or FL or HI to hold us over till we decided what we wanted to do next. After all, we would need somewhere to move all of our furniture. We didn’t know what we could afford till we sold the house, so we pushed off that decision till it was sold. At the same time, we didn’t really want to jump back into a very hot housing market when we were so unsure about where we wanted to live. While we’d love to move to Hawaii, we don’t want to buy there unless we have lived there for a few months and feel sure about that decision. So we wondered if we might find someone who needed a housesitter.

A short Google search later, and I discovered a pet sitting digital platform – TrustedHouseSitters.com – a kind of AirBnB for pet sitting. The platform connects homeowners (often with pets/animals) to housesitters. A brief search on the platform revealed multiple homeowners looking for pet sitters – none in Hawaii.

We chatted it over and thought we could maybe find an investment home in Orlando as a base. We started looking for a pet sit in Orlando. But as we looked at the housing market, it became clear it’s too much of a seller’s market.

Seeing so many pet sits in the UK, I wondered if maybe we could go to the UK/EU for a few weeks, see friends and family, and do some pet sitting at the same time. It didn’t take us long to decide this was a great opportunity to travel for the first time in three years. I booked flights to depart the day after our home sale was due to close. We were committed to going to the UK! (Although in the back of my mind I knew the flights could be rescheduled up to few days before departure). Our return flights were booked for four months after our outbound. Would we be able to fill up our time?

We immediately began searching for pet sits to match our dates. It quickly became clear we’d need to differentiate ourselves in order to secure the most desirable sits. So we filled out our sitter profile with a bit of our story and asked for references from friends.

At the same time, we started selling our collected “stuff” that we had accumulated over the years. As we’d need to pay for storage for anything we didn’t sell, we had a financial incentive to de-clutter our lives.

Within thirty days, we had sold off most of our furniture and even stuff I thought we’d need to pay to get rid of. We also managed to book six pet sits spanning three months! And that’s the subject of this blog – our Adventures With Sheepums!

Meet Sheepums

We “rescued” Sheepums from a store shelf in Cork, Ireland, while visiting on a transatlantic cruise. (We had to pay a rescue fee to the store owners of course). As a rescue sheep, he’s very insecure and likes to come everywhere with us. He’s been autocrossing and hiking. He’s toured the Vatican, the Colosseum and the Acropolis. No doubt, Sheepums will be posting his perspectives.

Next post: Adventure Day: Minus One

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